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

A recovery support worker will start traveling among Homer, Seldovia, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Ninilchik and nearby communities to help people dealing with addiction, under a $349,809 federal grant to Recover Alaska.

The traveling specialist, working through the Kachemak Bay Recovery Connection, is paired with a virtual call line based in Seward that rural Alaskans anywhere in the state can reach. Both rely on certified peers — people with their own recovery experience — who offer support and connect people to screening and treatment. The program is aimed at adults with substance use disorders, often alongside mental health conditions, and expects to reach a few dozen people in its first year, building toward about 225 over three years.

The need on the southern Kenai Peninsula is real. Alaska's drug overdose death rate runs well above the national average, and the federal government classifies the whole service area as rural and short on health professionals. The region's median household income is more than $15,000 below the state's.

The grant is part of a broader push to build recovery support outside Alaska's larger cities — the state has been funding rural peer programs elsewhere, including in the Mat-Su, with the stated goal of making that kind of help a permanent fixture beyond Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks.