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Context Engaging with peers is gaining increasing interest from healthcare systems in numerous countries. Peers are people who offer support by drawing on lived experiences of significant challenges or ‘insider’ knowledge of communities. Growing evidence suggests that peers can serve as a bridge between underserved communities and care providers across sectors, through their ability to build trust and relationships. Peer support is thus seen as an innovative way to address core issues of formal healthcare, particularly fragmentation of care and health inequalities. The wide body of approaches, goals and models of peer support speaks volumes of such interest. Navigating the various labels used to name peers, however, can be daunting. Similar terms often hide critical differences. Objectives/Background This article seeks to disentangle the conceptual multiplicity of peer support, presenting a conceptual map based on a 3‐year knowledge synthesis project involving peers and programme stakeholders in Canada, and international scientific and grey literature. Synthesis/Main Results The map introduces six key questions to navigate and situate peer support approaches according to peers' roles, pathways and settings of practice, regardless of the terms used to label them. As a tool, it offers a broad overview of the different ways peers contribute to integrating health and community care. Discussion We conclude by discussing the map's potential and limitations to establish a common language and bridge models, in support of knowledge exchange among practitioners, policymakers and researchers. Patient or Public Contribution Our team includes one experienced peer support worker. She contributed to the design of the conceptual map and the production of the manuscript. More than 10 peers working across Canada were also involved during research meetings to validate and refine the conceptual map.

Peer support workers-people with a significant lived and living experience of a social or health condition-use their experiential knowledge and obtain training to help and care for others. They are integrated in different clinical settings, including those for people experiencing homelessness. Most research on peer support implementation in homelessness has not considered the of the implementation, particularly in periods of crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, a participatory research project examined the integration of a peer support worker in a primary and community care clinic that serves people experiencing homelessness in Montreal (Canada). This article presents a narrative case study analysis of the specific data on implementation derived from this project. Three main learning points are of interest regarding implementation: 1) crises can precipitate challenges but also particular opportunities for the implementation of peer support initiatives in homelessness; 2) even during a crisis, certain key steps cannot be skipped when the goal is a successful implementation; and 3) research can be an external asset for clinical teams as they struggle to deliver care during periods of crisis. Peer support initiatives in homelessness can be implemented in the Canadian context during periods of crisis-for example, the COVID-19 pandemic-for health and social care services. Moreover, the concept of itself can be reexamined by clinical and research teams worldwide as potentially enabling the implementation of novel initiatives.