PRESENTLY: An Innovative New Model of Peer Support Group

Last week we talked about FORUM peer support groups and how they are changing a number of things about how groups operate.  This week we cover another new organization that is developing a different way to deliver peer support groups.

 Presently (https://mypresently.org/) is a company that provides peer support groups for people during and after treatment for cancer.  Presently describes itself as “a psychosocial survivorship platform that provides peer-to-peer support at scale, connecting cancer patients to their most powerful support system: each other”.

 In most ways, Presently provides peer support groups like most traditional peer support organizations.  Groups are free and are facilitated by people in recovery from cancer themselves.

 Presently does try to address the concern about quality and consistency of the group experience. They do this by:

1.     Careful vetting of potential facilitators,

2.     Training facilitators

3.     Paying their facilitators. 

4.     Limiting the size of the groups to 12 members to ensure all members have an opportunity to share.

5.     Using a specific model of care along with a set of ethics guidelines for their facilitators.

Peer support groups for adults with cancer have been around for some time.  Many are organized by local medical centers, resulting in a lot of variation between groups and difficulty for the public to find those groups.  The National Cancer Institute and Cancer.net provide a few of the available listings of groups, but provides no oversight or quality control. 

 How does Presently pay their facilitators?  Many cancer peer support groups are organized at the medical center level, reflecting the reality that oncology clinical providers see the value of peer support and want their clients to have peer support groups available to them.  The variation in quality between groups is a concern for these providers and their clients.  Presently contracts with healthcare organizations to provide high quality peer support groups to their clients.  Presently uses that contract to pay their facilitators, helping them to create incentives for the hard work that facilitators have to do.  As a for-profit organization, Presently has an incentive for ensuring a quality experience for all participants. 

 Could this model be used in other areas of peer support?  There are already salaried Peer Support Specialists who facilitate self-help groups in the field of mental and medical care.  They are trained group leaders and so there is greater accountability for them in terms of how they lead their groups.   The profit incentive for Presently is not a common element in current peer support group organizations, and this is the most innovative aspect to what they are doing.  The profit margin motivates Presently staff to be responsible to attendees and to the healthcare organizations to provide high quality peer support that integrates well with the healthcare provided.  That is likely to lead to adaptations to the groups that make them even more participant-friendly, and more collaborative with providers. 

 I could see a similar organization developing around the need for other peer support groups in the areas of medical care. 

Whether it is cardiac care, pulmonary care, or neurological care, there are healthcare organizations that will see the need for high quality peer support groups as something they want to meet.  In the field of mental health, there are already a large number of peer support organizations facilitating groups – groups that are free and open to the public.  It is more difficult to see who would be willing to contract with a new provider to create new groups when mental health clients already have a number of options. 

 A challenge for Presently will be to maintain their internal motivation to provide the best peer support for cancer survivors.  Profit motives have the potential to interfere and even undermine intrinsic motivation.  I have spoken with David Gordon, the founder of Presently.  He is a cancer survivor himself, and the work of Presently is very personal to him.  I suspect he’ll have no trouble maintaining his internal motivation for this work. 

 Whether you are involved in cancer care or not, it will be worthwhile for you and all of us to keep an eye on these innovative new approaches to providing peer support groups.  At worst, they function as experiments in which we’ll learn something about what models of peer support work.  At best, they represent a new wave of peer support groups that will forever change how these important resources are delivered.

 KEY WORDS: Peer Support Groups, Innovation, Cancer, For-Profit