The involvement of peers in social, health and educational issues has many faces.

It may vary from one-way education processes, where peers are used to pass on ready-made health promotion messages, to more participatory forms of engagement, whereby members of a peer community not only deliver, but also engage in educational sessions and in many cases peers own the initial ánd final stages of the response. Until relatively recently, marginalised populations, such as drug users, sex workers and other groups have seldom been involved in policy development and service implementation.

The following section provides examples of people who are working on meaningful involvement.