Become a HEART Peer Partner

Healing, Empowering, And Rebuilding Together

The Vegas Strong Resiliency Center has teamed up with a nationally recognized expert to create a community peer support program. This award-winning model will be used to develop an initiative for the worldwide Route 91 family: Healing, Empowering, And Rebuilding Together (HEART).

HEART peers are trained to offer services on an individual basis and also through wellness webinars. They are well-versed in evidence-based best practices to support each other and also have the benefit and guidance of trauma-informed providers. Peer support is known to have benefits for both the supporter and the receiver, with the roles and relationship fluctuating and using access to more formal services as needed.

What Is Peer Support?

Models of peer support focus on a cultural shared lived experience, with an emphasis on the resilience of the individuals involved. The tasks of peer support include connection, information-gathering, risk assessment, case management, resilience building, and affirmation.

Multiple peer-reviewed studies have repeatedly shown these programs have offered solidarity and healing support to communities in need of an additional option to traditional behavioral healthcare services. A peer supporter saying to another peer in need, “I have been where you are and I am with you now,” has been recognized as a uniquely powerful experience.

This Route 91 Peer Support Initiative has been designed and customized with specific tasks and applications to offer structure and focus to the peer support experience. HEART is an enhancement of resources to expand and supplement existing services and supports that the Route 91 community has built as a family.

Cherie Castellano, MA, CSW, LPC, AAETS, lends her respected guidance to this program as a national expert in the field of peer support with over twenty years of experience. She is the creator of the “Reciprocal Peer Support Model,” recognized as a national best practice by the American Psychiatric Association and Department of Defense Center of Excellence. In 2018, Cherie received the Silver Award for Service Innovation from the American Psychiatric Association.

If you are interested in participating in the Route 91 Peer Support Initiative as a HEART Peer Partner, please contact the Behavioral Health Coordinator, Terri Keener.