There is increasing evidence that the physical health of the severely mentally ill (SMI) in the United States is seriously compromised. Recent reports have found that individuals with SMI die, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population, predominantly due to treatable medical conditions such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes. In addition to the individual consequences there are major financial implications for our local, state and national health and mental health systems as mental health consumers often over utilize the most expensive and least effective care services such as emergency rooms.

What are the goals of the Peer Health Navigator Project?

The ultimate goal of peer health navigation is to help individuals with serious mental illness gain the confidence, skills, tools and self-empowerment to navigate the physical health care system on their own and maintain their health and wellness goals. This, in turn, may improve the way individuals feel mentally and physically and increase their self-empowerment in other areas of their lives.

A health navigator may do this by helping people:

1. Improve their access to physical health care

2. Improve their effective use of health care services

3. Improve their ability to use the physical health care system on their own.

To do this the project combined three approaches: integrated care, patient education, and skill building. Specifically, components of the intervention included assessment and planning (i.e. developing wellness goals), coordinated linkages (i.e. navigating consumers through the healthcare system), consumer education (i.e. health and wellness issues) and the use of cognitive-behavioral strategies (i.e. modeling, successive approximation) to support health care utilization behavior change and behavior maintenance. They call this method of empowerment "for them, with them, by them".