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Title: Opportunities for Enhancing Access and Efficacy of Peer Sponsorship in Substance Use Disorder Recovery
Substance use disorders (SUDs) are characterized by an inability to decrease a substance use (e.g., alcohol or opioids) despite negative repercussions. SUDs are clinically diagnosable, hazardous, and considered a public health issue. Sponsorship, a specialized type of peer mentorship, is vital in the recovery process and originates from 12-step fellowship programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). To investigate sponsorship relationship practices and to identify design opportunities for digitally-mediated peer support, we conducted 27 in-depth interviews with members of AA and NA. We identified five key sponsorship relationship practices relevant for designing social computing tools to support sponsorship and recovery: 1) assessing dyadic compatibility, 2) managing sponsorship with or without technology, 3) establishing boundaries, 4) building a peer support network, and 5) managing anonymity. We identify social computing and digitally-mediated design opportunities and implications.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1651575
PAR ID:
10161368
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 14
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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