The benefits and challenges of established peer support programmes for patients, informal caregivers, and healthcare providers.

Purpose: Peer support programmes that provide services for various health conditions have been in existence for many years; however, there is little study of their benefits and challenges. Our goal was to explore how existing peer support programmes help patients with a variety of health conditions, the challenges that these programmes meet, and how they are addressed.

Methods: We partnered with 7 peer support programmes operating in healthcare and community settings and conducted 43 semi-structured interviews with key informants.