PAVE Pathways: Continuing Education Kits, Built by People Who Lived It
The PAVE Pathways catalog spans 225 continuing education topics across nine practice domains. Each kit is a self-contained training package with a facilitator guide, participant workbook, slide deck, and post-test, written for peer specialists and the behavioral health and public health teams that supervise them. Kits are designed to be delivered as-is or adapted to an organization's existing training calendar and documentation requirements.
Available now
LifeSync and Purpose
What Is LifeSync?
Finding the Place Where Who You Are Meets How You Live
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit introduces PAVE's purpose-alignment framework, showing how to find harmony between who a person is, what they love, and how they live day to day. It adapts the Ikigai model for peer-led growth rather than corporate goal setting, and frames purpose as an ongoing practice of alignment across personal values, professional skills, and community impact. Grounded in positive psychology, purpose-in-life research, and longevity studies. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in recovery and people returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Understanding Survival, Building Trauma-Informed Support
Most people who struggle with substances are carrying pain that started long before the first use. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps frontline staff, peer leaders, and justice-impacted program teams understand how trauma and chronic stress sensitize the brain's threat-detection systems, why substance use so often works as an adaptive way to regulate overwhelming emotional pain, and how to build support around the three core trauma-informed principles of safety, choice, and empowerment. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in active recovery and people returning from incarceration.
Shame is one of the strongest forces keeping people stuck in substance use cycles, and it is one of the least directly addressed in most programs. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps peer specialists, counselors, and reentry staff teach the difference between "I did something bad" and "I am bad," show how shame drives secrecy, isolation, and return to use, and practice cognitive tools and self-forgiveness steps that disarm self-stigma. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, CCAR, and the research base on shame, guilt, and stigma in recovery. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in active recovery and people returning from incarceration.
The people doing the supporting carry a load nobody talks about. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps peer specialists, recovery coaches, caregivers, and frontline staff recognize the early warning signs of compassion fatigue, tell the difference between healthy empathy and absorbing other people's pain, and build steady practices for peer debriefing, reflection, and firm emotional boundaries. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, CCAR, and the research base on secondary traumatic stress and burnout. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in recovery and people returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Building Trust First: Community Engagement for Programs People Actually Show Up To
Why Trust Comes Before Outreach, and How to Earn It
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit teaches outreach and engagement staff how to build the kind of trust that turns a flyer into a full room, especially with communities that have been let down by outside organizations before. It treats trust as something earned through consistency and follow-through, not something assumed because an organization means well, and it gives practical, low-cost ways to meet people where they are. Built on community engagement and community-based participatory research guidance, and written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including peer specialists, outreach workers, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Finding and Winning Small Grants: Resource Development for Grassroots Programs
A Peer-Led Approach to Funding Real Community Work
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit gives peer-led organizations without a dedicated development team a clear, step-by-step process for finding, applying for, and managing small grants that fund real community work. It treats grant writing as a learnable skill rather than a mystery reserved for people with advanced degrees, and it is honest about the paperwork and follow-through required after the money arrives. Built on established funder guidance and nonprofit capacity-building research, and written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including peer specialists, grassroots organizers, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now running or supporting programs.
From Peer to Leader: Growing Into Leadership Without Losing Your Roots
Mentorship Skills for Peer Specialists Stepping Into Their First Leadership Role
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit supports peer specialists and frontline staff who are stepping into supervisory or mentorship roles for the first time, often without any formal management training. It treats the shift from being a peer among peers to holding a leadership role as an identity change that deserves real preparation, not just a new title, and it is honest that carrying responsibility for others can put a leader's own recovery and wellbeing at risk if they do not protect it. Built on established peer supervision, mentorship, and workforce development guidance, and written in warm, plain language for adult learners, including people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now stepping into these roles.
Measuring What Matters: Simple Evaluation for Programs That Don't Have a Data Team
Tracking Outcomes and Telling Your Program's Real Story Without a Statistics Degree
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit gives frontline staff and program leads a plain-language way to track outcomes and tell their program's real story, without needing a statistics background or expensive software. It draws a clear line between counting activity and measuring impact, and it treats data collection as a habit the team can actually sustain, not a burden bolted on to satisfy a funder. Built on established nonprofit evaluation and outcomes measurement guidance, and written in warm, plain language for adult learners, including peer specialists, program coordinators, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now running or supporting programs.
Honoring Survivors, Building Whole-Person Wellness
More than half of people living with diagnosed HIV in the United States are now age 50 or older. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps frontline staff and peer leaders recognize the medical, cognitive, and emotional realities of aging with HIV, including AIDS Survivor Syndrome, and apply PAVE's R.A.C.E. framework and the MIPA principle to build programs that honor long-term survivors as experts, not afterthoughts. Grounded in HIV.gov, NIH HIVinfo, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
One representative topic from each of the nine practice domains, in development now. These previews show the shape of the kits being built next.
AddictionComing Soon
Understanding Cravings
A practical look at how cravings function in the brain and body, and how to navigate them without automatic reaction.
ADD-1.2 · In development
HIV and Chronic IllnessComing Soon
Living Well With HIV
Shifts focus from medical management to designing a vibrant, joyful life centered on wellness, hope, and personal growth.
HIV-3.23 · In development
See all available kits
Pick a practice domain to see the 25 topics inside it, each with its learning objective and core focus areas.
Addiction
25 topics
Featured kit, ready to order
The Role of Trauma in Addiction
Understanding Survival, Building Trauma-Informed Support
Most people who struggle with substances are carrying pain that started long before the first use. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps frontline staff, peer leaders, and justice-impacted program teams understand how trauma and chronic stress sensitize the brain's threat-detection systems, why substance use so often works as an adaptive way to regulate overwhelming emotional pain, and how to build support around the three core trauma-informed principles of safety, choice, and empowerment. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in active recovery and people returning from incarceration.
An introduction to understanding addiction as a complex coping strategy and brain adaptation rather than a personal or moral failing.
Learning objective: Understand addiction as a learned coping and survival mechanism rather than a moral failing.
What skills you will learn: How to reframe addiction in trauma-informed language, and how repeated use reshapes the brain's reward pathways.
How this applies in the field: Any peer specialist or frontline worker can use this shared language to open conversations about substance use with compassion instead of judgment.
Coming SoonADD-1.2
Understanding Cravings
A practical look at how cravings function in the brain and body, and how to navigate them without automatic reaction.
Learning objective: Understand how a craving functions in the brain and body, and how to respond to it without automatic reaction.
What skills you will learn: The neurobiology behind a craving, how to identify personal cues and high-risk situations, and evidence-based coping tools like urge surfing.
How this applies in the field: Any peer supporting someone through active cravings can use these tools to help them ride out the moment instead of reacting to it.
Coming SoonADD-1.3
Relapse Prevention Strategies
Equips peers with actionable, daily plans to recognize early warning signs of relapse and sustain their safety net.
Learning objective: Learn to recognize the early warning signs of relapse before they lead to a return to use.
What skills you will learn: The three stages of relapse, and how to build a personalized, written relapse prevention plan.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build their own early-warning system and a real plan for sudden stressors.
Coming SoonADD-1.4
The Stages of Change Model
Explores the Transtheoretical Model of change, highlighting how to meet individuals exactly where they are on their path.
Learning objective: Learn the six stages of the Transtheoretical Model of change and how to meet someone at their current stage.
What skills you will learn: How to identify which stage someone is in, and how to tailor support and communication to match it.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this model to avoid pushing someone faster than they are ready to go, and to respond to setbacks without judgment.
Coming SoonADD-1.5
Triggers and How to Manage Them
A close look at identifying personal internal and external triggers and building practical, trauma-informed boundary systems.
Learning objective: Learn to identify internal and external triggers and build a trauma-informed system to manage them.
What skills you will learn: How to distinguish internal from external triggers, and grounding exercises for calming the nervous system during a trigger event.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build real boundaries around their specific triggers, not just generic advice.
Coming SoonADD-1.6
Brain Science of Addiction
Demystifies the complex brain chemistry of substance use, making neurology accessible and reducing self-stigma.
Learning objective: Understand the brain chemistry behind addiction well enough to explain it in plain language.
What skills you will learn: The role of dopamine and reward pathways, and how neuroplasticity supports healing in recovery.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this science to reduce a participant's self-stigma by showing them what is actually happening in their brain, and that it can heal.
Coming SoonADD-1.7
Substance Use vs. Substance Use Disorder
Clarifies the continuum of substance use, from casual consumption to clinical criteria for dependence.
Learning objective: Learn the clinical continuum from substance use to a diagnosable substance use disorder.
What skills you will learn: DSM-5 criteria for substance use disorders, and how to differentiate use, misuse, abuse, and physical dependence.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to have more accurate, less judgmental conversations about where someone actually falls on this continuum.
Coming SoonADD-1.9
Family Dynamics and Addiction
Explores how substance use impacts the entire family unit and the role of systemic healing.
Learning objective: Understand how addiction affects the entire family system, not just the person using.
What skills you will learn: How to recognize common family roles, and the difference between healthy support and codependent behavior.
How this applies in the field: Any peer working with families can use this to help them rebuild trust and healthier boundaries together.
Coming SoonADD-1.10
Peer Pressure and Substance Use
Provides peer leaders with tools to teach resistance skills and build peer-led environments that encourage recovery.
Learning objective: Learn to teach resistance skills against social and direct pressure to use substances.
What skills you will learn: Assertive communication and refusal skill roleplays, and how to build recovery-oriented peer networks.
How this applies in the field: Any peer leader can use this to help participants build a social circle that supports their recovery instead of undermining it.
Coming SoonADD-1.11
Coping Skills for Early Recovery
A hands-on toolkit of physical, emotional, and cognitive skills needed to stabilize in the first months of sobriety.
Learning objective: Learn the physical, emotional, and cognitive skills needed to stabilize in early recovery.
What skills you will learn: How to build basic routines for sleep and nutrition, and how to apply cognitive reframing to interrupt negative self-talk.
How this applies in the field: Any peer supporting someone in their first months of sobriety can use this toolkit to help them stabilize day to day.
Coming SoonADD-1.12
The Cycle of Addiction
Breaks down the repeating pattern of preoccupation, intoxication, and withdrawal to help individuals find intervention points.
Learning objective: Learn the repeating pattern of the addiction cycle and where it can realistically be interrupted.
What skills you will learn: The three primary stages of the addiction cycle, and how to identify leverage points for peer support.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to spot the specific moment in someone's cycle where support will have the most impact.
Coming SoonADD-1.13
Harm Reduction Approaches
Introduces the philosophy of meeting individuals where they are and reducing negative consequences without demanding absolute abstinence.
Learning objective: Understand the core philosophy and evidence base of harm reduction.
What skills you will learn: Practical harm reduction services like syringe exchange and naloxone access, and how to build non-judgmental, client-centered relationships.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this approach to keep someone safer and engaged in care, even if they are not ready for abstinence.
Coming SoonADD-1.14
Dual Diagnosis: Mental Health and Substance Use
Explores the interaction between co-occurring mental health challenges and substance use disorders.
Learning objective: Understand why co-occurring mental health and substance use challenges require integrated treatment.
What skills you will learn: Common co-occurring pairings, and the specific role a peer specialist plays in dual diagnosis support.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to better support someone whose mental health and substance use are intertwined, not separate issues.
Coming SoonADD-1.15
The Impact of Addiction on Relationships
Examines how active addiction strains personal connections and guides the gentle process of relational repair.
Learning objective: Understand how active addiction strains relationships, and how repair actually happens.
What skills you will learn: How to identify codependency and broken trust patterns, and how to guide honest, accountable communication.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone navigate rebuilding a relationship strained by active addiction.
Coming SoonADD-1.16
Addiction and the Workplace
Addresses how substance use impacts career stability, and strategies for navigating employment in early recovery.
Learning objective: Understand how addiction and early recovery intersect with workplace stability and legal protections.
What skills you will learn: How to recognize functional impairment at work, and employee rights under the ADA and FMLA.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone navigate returning to work or deciding whether to disclose their recovery.
Coming SoonADD-1.17
Stress Management Without Substances
A practical exploration of healthy stress-relief methods to replace self-medicating habits.
Learning objective: Learn healthy, evidence-based ways to manage stress that do not rely on substances.
What skills you will learn: Techniques like deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation, and how to build a personalized daily stress-reduction routine.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone replace a substance-based coping habit with a sustainable one.
Coming SoonADD-1.18
The Role of Counseling in Addiction Treatment
Demystifies professional therapy options and how peers can collaborate with clinical counselors.
Learning objective: Understand how professional counseling complements peer support in addiction treatment.
What skills you will learn: An overview of evidence-based therapy models, and how to help someone find a counselor who fits their values.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to make warm, informed referrals to clinical support instead of treating it as separate from their own work.
Coming SoonADD-1.19
Medications for Addiction Treatment (MAT)
De-stigmatizes and explains FDA-approved medications used to treat opioid and alcohol use disorders.
Learning objective: Understand how FDA-approved medications for addiction treatment work and why they matter.
What skills you will learn: How buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone work, and how to address common myths about MAT.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to support someone on MAT without stigma, and to integrate it into whole-person peer support.
Coming SoonADD-1.20
Social Stigma and Addiction
Examines the damaging effects of societal prejudice on recovery and provides strategies for stigma-busting.
Learning objective: Understand how stigma directly impacts treatment access and recovery outcomes.
What skills you will learn: Person-first, strength-based language, and how to safely share a recovery story to shift public perception.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to reduce stigma in their own language and to model a different way of talking about addiction.
Coming SoonADD-1.21
Technology and Behavioral Addictions
Explores non-substance behavioral addictions, including gaming, social media, and internet dependency.
Learning objective: Understand behavioral addictions and how they parallel substance-based addiction in the brain.
What skills you will learn: How to identify signs of compulsive digital device use, and how to build digital boundaries and detox practices.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to recognize and address behavioral addictions that often go unnoticed alongside substance use.
Coming SoonADD-1.22
Self-Compassion in Recovery
Teaches peers how to cultivate self-kindness to disarm the shame and guilt that often fuel relapse.
Learning objective: Learn to cultivate self-compassion as a direct tool against the shame and guilt that fuel relapse.
What skills you will learn: The three pillars of self-compassion, and daily exercises for building a supportive internal voice.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone interrupt self-critical thinking during a difficult moment in recovery.
Coming SoonADD-1.23
Resilience and Relapse Response
Focuses on rebuilding confidence and extracting learning immediately following a return to use.
Learning objective: Learn how to respond to a lapse in a way that rebuilds confidence instead of deepening shame.
What skills you will learn: How to reframe a lapse as feedback, and how to help someone re-engage with support networks quickly.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to respond to a participant's lapse in a way that keeps them moving forward instead of giving up.
Coming SoonADD-1.24
Building a Recovery Support Network
A step-by-step guide to identifying, establishing, and nurturing healthy, supportive connections.
Learning objective: Learn to build and maintain a healthy, supportive recovery network.
What skills you will learn: How to map an existing support network for gaps, and how to connect with recovery communities and sober social spaces.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build a network that actually sustains their recovery long term.
Coming SoonADD-1.25
Long-Term Recovery Maintenance
Shifts focus from early stabilization to sustaining a deeply meaningful, long-term recovery journey.
Learning objective: Learn to sustain a meaningful, long-term recovery lifestyle well beyond early stabilization.
What skills you will learn: How to adapt self-care routines to changing life stages, and how mentoring others builds resilience.
How this applies in the field: Any peer well into their own recovery can use this to keep growing and to give back through mentoring.
