Project Grow (Giving Resources and Options to Women) allows patients from five methadone clinics in the Bronx, New York to become teachers by sharing their street knowledge with the local medical community, the New York Times reported on April 2.

Six patients, or Peer Educators, work in pairs to lead 90-minute seminar courses for interns at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's residency program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

"They have this expertise, and if they can transmit that to the doctors, then we can improve the system," said Dr. Hillary Kunins, who founded Grow in 2001 to make it easier for methadone patients to access medical care. In addition to the seminars, Grow offers risk-reduction education, counseling and escorts to doctor's appointments.

"We don't present the participants as patients, we present them as teachers," said Dr. Melissa Stein, coordinator of substance abuse education for the interns. "They often don't share personal experience very much. It's a different dynamic than the testimonial model."

Peer Educators teach interns about street terminology, how users find and use drugs, and the sensations experienced during high and withdrawal. They suggest looking for signs of drug use that the doctors might not otherwise be aware of, such as the burn marks on a patient's fingers or mouth that may indicate crack use.

"In med school, we get the chemical mechanisms of what drugs do to the body and how to treat it," said intern Dr. Svetlana Korenfeld. "You can read about drug abuse, but if you've never seen it the way it really is, you won't recognize it."

"Learning factual information from someone who is an expert on their own disease would be something that (the interns) will remember for a long time," said Dr. Richard Saitz, the president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. "There's no word for educational malpractice, but to not train people in drug abuse when you're training them for H.I.V. or Hep C reduction is ridiculous."