Nothing about us without us
Help improve mental health and substance use services
The Interior Health (IH) mental health and substance use (MHSU) peer inclusion program brings together people with lived and living experience to help improve mental health and substance use services.
Your experience matters! The ideas, feedback, and insights you share can help make services more welcoming, accessible, and responsive to the needs of people who use them. By working together, we can help shape programs and services that better support our communities.
Who can get involved
We welcome people who:
- Live in the Interior Health region and have experience with mental health and substance use challenges, either personally or as a family member/loved one
- Are youth (ages 12-24) or adults (19+)
- Represent diverse lifestyles, backgrounds, gender identities, cultures, and ethnicities
- Identify as Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit
Ways to get involved
Health-care planning and improvement as a peer advisor
As a peer advisor, you can help improve services by sharing your experiences, feedback, and ideas. Your input helps guide how MHSU services are planned, delivered, and evaluated across Interior Health. Participation is flexible, and you can choose opportunities that are meaningful to you and fit your experience and availability.
Engagement topics may include harm reduction, reducing stigma in healthcare settings, improving treatment and support services, and other issues that affect people accessing care.
Opportunities may include:
- Participating in one-time engagement sessions
- Joining longer-term working groups or steering committees
- Co-facilitating educational groups or peer engagement sessions
- Presenting to staff or community groups
Local service delivery as a peer volunteer
Peer volunteers use their lived and living experience to support people accessing Interior Health MHSU services in their local communities.
We offer peer volunteer opportunities in communities across the Interior Health region, including Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Merritt, Grand Forks, and Trail. Most roles require an ongoing commitment, while still offering flexibility and choice.
Service delivery opportunities may include:
- Co-facilitating clinical groups
- Providing one-one or group peer support
- Supporting outreach and harm reduction services
- Supporting overdose prevention/supervised consumption sites
- Helping people find information and resources and community supports.
Travel nurses Michaela and Nick moved from Ontario to B.C., finding careers, community and a new home in Coldstream.
/stories/travel-nursing-brings-ontario-couple-new-home-coldstream
By sharing his story, Dave hopes others struggling with addiction understand that recovery is possible and that support is available.
/stories/what-worked-me-daves-healing-journey-addiction
For IH, wildfire preparedness is shaped by years of experience, regular training, exercises, inventories and relationships with partners across the region.
/stories/ih-prepares-wildfire-season-long-smoke-arrives
IH’s CMH redevelopment team travelled around Cariboo to reconnect with Indigenous communities and share how their input is shaping the hospital's new building.
/stories/closing-circle-indigenous-communities-shaping-future-cmh
Chris Turner turned to addiction as a teenager, but through his recovery has become a mentor to give hope to others battling addiction.
/stories/what-worked-me-chriss-focus-daily-skills-helps-recovery
Find tips for walking, biking or rolling to school safely. Learn how to make it safer to travel to school in your community.
/stories/how-walk-bike-or-roll-school-safely
STAY CONNECTED
Receive news, alerts, public service announcements and articles right to your inbox.
