Peer Education Systems - Overview

Peer education is a flexible social strategy within a prevention and early intervention delivery system. It usually focuses on children and youth, but it is increasingly utilized in workplace settings and has long been used successfully to reach high-risk populations. It is a process in which trained supervisors develop and support a group of suitable people to educate, strengthen and support their peers to contend with the health threats and decisions they face. Peer educators create a safe place for candid and genuine examination of attitudes, choices and situations. And through their role as educators they become informal influences, helpers, and advocates for systemic change.

Peer education is about access and trust. It reaches people proactively with credible messengers. It is a delivery system that is meant to stay in place, not for any single health threat or message, but for whatever health promotion and disease prevention goals are relevant to its audiences. Peer education can be compared to an intravenous (IV) drip; once it is in place, different medicines can be administered depending on the patient's need.

As a result, a systems approach is necessary for peer education to truly be effective. By a peer education system we mean a consciously constructed web that is both geographic and cross-sector (e.g., the different kinds of groups and organizations doing peer education within a school district or province) and institutional (the churches and schools in a diocese, or all of the prisons in a correctional system). The broader a system is, the more varied the kinds of programs and sub-systems within it, and the more comprehensive and sustainable its reach.

The audiences for peer education, and the needs of those audiences, vary. In countries where HIV/AIDS is generalized and pandemic, it is appropriate to invest in peer education as part of a primary prevention system. Where HIV/AIDS is concentrated in high-risk populations, peer education programs should focus on those groups. In either case, there are other health objectives related to, and yet also independent of, HIV infection. Peer education's measurable prevention objectives might include:

• promoting abstinence and delaying sexual debut
• reducing number of sexual partners
• increasing use of condoms
• encouraging voluntary and confidential HIV counseling and testing
• preventing unwanted pregnancy
• preventing and treating STIs
• promoting available HIV and AIDS treatment
• reducing stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, STIs, homosexuality, women's sexual behavior
• supporting orphans and vulnerable children
• reducing sexual violence
• reducing abuse of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco and increasing early treatment
• reducing intentional and unintentional injury
• reducing depression and suicide
• improving nutrition and physical activity

There are other objectives of peer education related to the place it can play in the examination, reconsideration and reinforcement of social norms. While learners are often bored and impatient with activities on HIV or smoking, they rarely get tired of talking about hard-to-measure, yet crucial health fundamentals such as these, especially when they are couched in creative lessons or conversations:

• Gender equity and attitudes about gender
• Tolerance of differences that are not harmful
• Intolerance of differences that are harmful
• Bullying and peer pressure
• Communication and coping skills
• The social pressures of advertising and consumerism
• The power of words and thoughts to help and hurt

To see how PE can address these issues and more in different settings, see our sectoral-specific experience in:

• Schools
• Higher Education
• Community-Based Organizations
• Faith-Based Organizations
• Sports
• Clinics
• Work Places