Peer support programs in prison could help fill health care gaps, report says

Peer support programs within prisons could be a small step toward improving Illinois’ abysmal prison health care system, a new report says.

The report from the John Howard Association, an independent Illinois prison watchdog, examined the impacts of peer support programs, which are simply opportunities for people incarcerated to help out one another.

They can be formal and organized by a prison's administration, or they can be informal gatherings initiated by people in prison, says Jenny Vollen-Katz, the group’s executive director.

"Community helping community is a really productive way to meet needs," Vollen-Katz said.

The report, published Wednesday, looked at formal and informal peer support groups in correctional systems in Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado that focus on a range of issues: mental health, substance abuse, palliative care, doula support and trauma recovery. Some provide job training and participants end up with certifications that could benefit them when they get out of prison.

"Not only is there an enormous need for care, but also a need for productive programming and the opportunity to learn skills that people can use to improve their daily lives while incarcerated," the report reads.

Peer support programs can also help fill critical gaps in medical care, something the Illinois Department of Corrections and prisons across the country struggle with, Vollen-Katz said.

A recent Sun-Times investigation found that the state’s critically understaffed facilities struggle to deliver proper correctional medicine to the tens of thousands of inmates in their care. And that's despite being under a consent decree, or court-enforceable settlement agreement, to improve health care since 2019.

Reports from an independent court-appointed monitor have described staffing levels as "dangerously low." For example, the department employs the equivalent of only 16 full-time physicians across 29 correctional facilities. That’s for more than 30,000 people in the state prison system.

While peer support programs cannot alone address staffing shortages, Vollen-Katz says, they could provide help in several ways. For example, people incarcerated could be trained on some basic medical practices, like taking blood pressure, drawing blood and administering vaccines.

"When you look at health care in prisons, it is huge and broken and expensive, and … there are answers, but they require investment, time, energy, money — and it is hard to compel the state to get there," Vollen-Katz said.

"Where we can find the lower lifts — where we don't have to employ more people, where there are bodies ready, willing and able to help other people to pitch in and get the work done, we need to think about how we can make that happen."

Vollen-Katz said she's heard from both people incarcerated and prison officials who are supportive and eager to work on these programs.

"I've actually been really heartened to hear that there are folks at IDOC who are interested in this, who are looking at possibilities," she said.