Peer support occurs when people provide knowledge, experience, emotional, social or practical help to each other. It commonly refers to an initiative consisting of trained supporters, and can take a number of forms such as peer mentoring, listening, or counseling. Peer support is also used to refer to initiatives where colleagues, members of self help organizations and others meet as equals to give each other support on a reciprocal basis. Peer in this case is taken to imply that each person has no more expertise as a supporter than the other and the relationship is one of equality.

A peer has "been there, done that" and can relate to others who are now in a similar situation. Trained peer support workers are required to obtain Continuing Education Units, like clinical staff.

The effectiveness of peer support is believed to derive from a variety of psychosocial processes described best by Mark Salzer in 2002: social support, experiential knowledge, social learning theory, social comparison theory and the helper-therapy principle.

Christopher Edward "Chris" Hansen (born March 26, 1959) is an American television journalist. He is known for his work on Dateline NBC, in particular the former segment To Catch a Predator, which revolved around catching potential Internet sex predators using a sting operation.

He went to Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills Michigan . Hansen became a reporter for Lansing NBC affiliate WILX in 1981 during his senior year at Michigan State University. He then reported for WFLA in Tampa, various radio stations and newspapers in Michigan, WXYZ in Detroit, and WDIV as an investigative reporter and anchor from 1988. In May 1993, Hansen joined NBC News as a correspondent for the newsmagazine Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric.

Hansen's notable work for Dateline includes coverage of the Columbine massacre, the Oklahoma City terrorist attack, the Unabomber and the TWA Flight 800 disaster; as well as investigative reports on Indian child slave labor and on counterfeit prescription drug sales in China. Hansen was responsible for most of Dateline's coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as stories on terrorist groups and the operations of Al-Qaeda. He exposed how a group linked to Osama Bin Laden had tried to buy missiles and nuclear weapons components, and he also worked on an exclusive report detailing an attempted 1994 terrorist attack in France. His series on the lack of security at airports resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration opening an investigation and ultimately revising its policies.