Recover Alaska wins $349,809 to put a peer recovery specialist on the lower Kenai Peninsula

A peer support specialist will begin traveling between Homer, Seldovia, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Ninilchik and surrounding communities under a $349,809 federal grant awarded to Recover Alaska, according to the federal award record posted on USAspending.gov.

The money pairs that itinerant position, delivered through Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection, with a Virtual Recovery Navigation call line based in Seward and open to rural communities across Alaska. The Rural Alaska Recovery Access Network, or RARAN, runs three years, from Sept. 30, 2026, through Sept. 29, 2029. There is no matching requirement.

The project targets adults 18 and older with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions. It plans to serve 50 unduplicated people in the first year, 75 in the second and 100 in the third, for 225 total. The Kenai Peninsula Borough, home to both the Seward hub and the communities the specialist will visit, has a population of 60,413.

Recover Alaska's own application supplies the case for the money. Alaska's 2023 age-adjusted drug overdose mortality rate was 49.4 per 100,000, against a national rate of 31.3. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration counts the entire service area as rural and as a health professional shortage area. The region's median household income is more than $15,000 below the state median.

RARAN pursues four goals: expanding access to peer recovery support services, building recovery capital and family stability, improving employment and workforce participation, and strengthening rural recovery infrastructure. Services combine peer support with screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment, delivered by certified peers with lived experience under a hub-and-spoke model. One stated objective: at least 70% of participants completing baseline and follow-up assessments will show increased recovery capital on the BARC-10 tool, a ten-question self-assessment, by the end of the three years. Recovery capital is the stock of things that hold a recovery up: housing, work, family, community ties. The application calls the award consistent with the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

The Alaska Department of Health's fiscal 2026 operating grant book funds rural peer support, including awards to True North Recovery Inc. in the Mat-Su, and describes an intent to institutionalize peer support outside Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks.

The grant record contains only Recover Alaska's own account. No independent assessment appears in it.