City expands peer recovery workforce
New York City will invest $12 million over the next four years to expand overdose recovery and outreach services across the five boroughs in a plan Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled on May 7, a move officials say will strengthen community-based care while creating hundreds of jobs for people in recovery.
Peer specialists understand what recovery looks like because they’ve lived it themselves.
Mayor Zohran MaMdani
The funding, drawn from opioid settlement money, is expected to create 500 new peer specialist positions through nonprofit organizations that work directly with New Yorkers struggling with substance use disorder. Peer specialists are individuals with lived experience who help others navigate recovery, connect to treatment and access support services.
“Every New Yorker deserves access to care, dignity and support, no matter where they are in their recovery journey,” Mamdani said in a news release. “Peer specialists understand what recovery looks like because they’ve lived it themselves.”
The investment comes as the city continues battling an overdose crisis that has devastated communities for years, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and among Black and Latino residents. Although officials said recent numbers show improvement, overdose deaths remain a major public health concern.
According to provisional city data, New York City recorded 2,192 overdose deaths in 2024, down from 3,056 in 2023 — the first major decline in nearly a decade. From January through September 2025, overdose deaths remained relatively stable following that decrease.
City officials said the new funding is part of the broader HealthyNYC initiative, which aims to reduce overdose deaths by 25% by 2030 while improving overall life expectancy.
Using $12 million of opioid settlement money, the city is expanding four years to expand overdose. Above, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, left, at May 7 news conference.
The money will support recovery centers and peer-led outreach programs operated by organizations including Community Health Action of Staten Island, Exponents, Fortune Society, Odyssey House, Phoenix House, Let’s Talk Safety and Samaritan Daytop Village.
Funding will help expand mobile outreach programs, support peer certification training and scholarships, and increase staffing for organizations working directly with vulnerable residents.
Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin said the initiative focuses on meeting people where they are and building trust through people who understand addiction firsthand.
“This investment puts more resources in the hands of trusted messengers delivering the direct services New Yorkers with substance use disorder desperately need,” Martin said in the release.
Officials said peer specialists often play a critical role in helping people enter and remain in treatment.
Research has shown peer-led behavioral health programs can improve engagement and recovery outcomes by offering support grounded in personal experience rather than clinical treatment alone.
The city has increasingly directed opioid settlement funds toward harm reduction, treatment and recovery programs in recent years. In fiscal year 2025 alone, the city allocated $41 million in opioid settlement funding for substance use services across agencies.
Several elected officials and nonprofit leaders praised the latest investment as a step toward addressing addiction through public health rather than criminalization.
Councilwoman Lynn Schulman, chair of the Committee on Health, said the funding directs resources into organizations already doing “critical, on-the-ground work” in vulnerable communities.
Tiffany Cabán, Schulman’s council colleague, said in the release the
city was “investing in people” by expanding peer-based care models.
Organizations receiving funding also highlighted the importance of expanding outreach efforts directly into neighborhoods.
Phoenix House President and CEO Ann-Marie Foster said the organization plans to launch its first mobile outreach and wellness unit as part of the initiative, bringing mental health and recovery services directly to communities.
Officials encouraged New Yorkers seeking mental health or substance use support to call or text 988 for confidential counseling and referrals at any time.
–Jeffrey
Bessen
Courtesy Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
5T learning center’s Susan Corbelli retires
By AIDAN WARSHAVSKY awarshavsky@liherald.com
Susan Corbelli remembers volunteering at the Woodmere Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Woodmere as a middle schooler in 1965, where she sang songs with the seniors and helped them pass the time. That put her on course, she said, to be a volunteer for the rest of her life.
Now 72, Corbelli is retiring from her job as an administrative assistant at the Five Towns Learning Center, in Inwood.
Corbelli was hired in 1995 in part because of her work experience. She had spent a decade painting scenery for Broadway shows before working for six years at the nowdefunct Septum Printing in Oceanside printing pennysavers.
“I had experience with the software [the learning center] was using,” Corbelli said.
Pepper Robinson, the
learning center’s executive director since 2004, called Corbelli her righthand woman. Robinson said that Corbelli was a tremendous help with daily operations.
Beyond her responsibilities with insurance, and staff training and orientation, Corbelli roamed the learning center, from the kitchen to the class -
rooms. She helped with special events like the National Council of Jewish Women’s back-toschool store and the center’s two-day trip to Rock Hall Museum in Lawrence, where children make scarecrows.
“Susan would pick up everyone who didn’t have a car and take them to our holiday parties,” Robin -
life. Dozens of relatives gathered for barbecues on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
“My husband and I entertained our family every weekend,” Corbelli said. “We had a big house on the water in Island Park. We loved to be with our family.”
son said. “She’d run errands for people who couldn’t. That’s the kind of woman she was.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, when the learning center stayed open for families in need, Corbelli helped Robinson secure grants to keep it operating. For children who aged out of the learning center and were in public school, the center opened its all-purpose room and offered staff and resources to help them do schoolwork online before going outside to play.
Whenever problems arose, Robinson knew she had someone she could count on. “Anytime there was a disaster, we did it together,” she said.
Corbelli’s warmth and dedication attracted many families, including Paola Cortez and her now 6-year-old son, Salim, who attended the learning center through kindergarten.
“Susan would always ask Salim about his day,” Cortez said. “She was always so caring.”
Growing up on Wood Lane in Woodsburgh, Corbelli had an active family life. For many years her family belonged to several beach clubs in Atlantic Beach. When she wasn’t at the beach, she played softball through junior high school, and graduated from Hewlett High School in 1971.
As she got older, Corbelli, her husband, Robert Corbelli, who owned an auto shop in Oceanside, and their child maintained a close-knit family
Now a grandmother, Corbelli remembers when seniors from the Five Towns Senior Center, in Woodmere, came to the learning center once a week. For more than 20 years, the seniors would pair up with students on small projects or reading, and Corbelli enjoyed watching the interactions.
“It was a beautiful program,” she said. “A lot of the kids didn’t have grandparents, and a lot of these grandparents didn’t have access to their grandchildren.”
Robinson thanked Corbelli for her dedication to the center, and noted that Corbelli always looked for ways to help where she could, and knew every child’s name, as well as the parents and grandparents she met.
“Susan was an integral part of the family,” Robinson said. “Not just for the staff, but for the families.”
As she looks toward retirement, Corbelli said she has joined the New Horizon Counseling Center’s Senior Center, in Hewlett, and has taken an interest in mahjong and canasta, as well as tai chi. Her volunteer experience when she was a student at Woodmere Elementary — now the Woodmere Education Center — she said, was a huge factor in shaping what became her future. She had the chance to reconnect with Elinor Tannenbaum, the sixthgrade teacher she had volunteered for, at a National Council of Jewish Women’s volunteer breakfast. Volunteering, Corbelli said, taught her to be involved in the community, and how vital that role is.
“That was another thing that married me to the center,” Corbelli said, adding of Tannenbaum, “She made a lasting impression on my life.
Courtesy Susan Corbelli
Susan Corbelli enjoys spending time with her family, including Olivia Holmes, second from left, Anna Brofsky and Karen Holmes.
Rock Hall unveils America 250 exhibit
To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, Rock Hall Museum is hosting a series of lectures and exhibits that examine the Revolutionary War from multiple perspectives including the difficult question many colonists faced: Which side would you choose?
Rock Hall pre-dates the United States, being built in 1767 making the semiquincentennial not only a marker for the country but for an anniversary of everything at Rock Hall.
Titled “Which Side Are You On?”, the exhibit that opened on April 26, will
examine the choices faced by colonists in the 1770s, when loyalty to the British Crown clashed with growing calls for independence.
“We have not only information on Long Island’s role in the revolution but in particular the division between Loyalists and Patriots,” said Amy Vacchio, director of Rock Hall Museum. “The Martin family’s story is unique because it’s a story that’s often not told because it’s about their loyalty to the king as a Loyalist family.”
— Melissa Berman
The “Which side are you on?” exhibit asks guests to question whether they would be a Patriot or a Loyalist during the revolution.
Tim Baker/Herald photos
Linda Sava, vice president of Friends of Rock Hall, left, Joe Fuller, treasurer of Friends of Rock Hall, Doug Sheer, president of Friends of Rock Hall, Amy Vacchio, director of Rock Hall Museum and Paris Popack, a board member at the opening of the “Which Side Are You On?” exhibit to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
Courtesy Amy Vacchio
Amy Vacchio, director of Rock Hall Museum welcomed guests to the exhibit which features Rock Hall’s existence during the American Revolution, on April 26.
Doug Sheer, president of Friends of Rock Hall with Faith Stallone from Girl Scout Troop 3305. Stallone is the recipient of the Linda Barrier Scholarship for community service.
Woodmere siblings Sam and Olivia Sava attended the opening and walked through the exhibit.
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Q. The question of how the pyramids were built came up in a recent discussion among friends. I’m wondering if there’s any definite answer to that question. One person said that even with hundreds of thousands of slaves, you’re only as strong as the rope can bear, and another suggested that they were built by extraterrestrials, but nothing serious came out of that. What do you know about this?
A. There are many theories about the construction of the pyramids. The Library of Alexandria may have contained this information, but was burned by Julius Caesar, accidentally, when he attacked the ships in the harbor nearby and the sprinkler system for the library (which had failed inspections) wasn’t working that day, or nobody ever made the drawings to begin with. We’ll never know the true answer, but there are many profound and wise engineering ideas on this subject. You may not be aware that there are more than 100 pyramids in Egypt alone, and many of them are still standing today.
So how did ancient Egyptians build them, using millions of blocks of Nile riverbank stone (and white limestone, dragged from much farther south, for the finishes)? How did they construct a 6.5-million-ton mountain of stone blocks, each weighing 2.5 tons, or 5,000 pounds, on sand? Several historical figures, pardon the pun, weighed in on this question.
The most prominent, Herodotus, of ancient Greece, who wasn’t there but is considered the father of historians, wrote of a machine system of levers and pulleys that lifted each block to the next level, and then another set of levers and pulleys was used for the next level, etc. I am fascinated by the writings of a more recent pair of writers, Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori, who propose an idea, based on the dissection of pyramids that have, through recent history, been documented. In their book “Why Buildings Fall Down,” they describe and illustrate in sketches how stones were placed.
Imhotep, considered the greatest mathematician and engineer in Egyptian history, designed later-era pyramids, observing and calculating how to avoid previous failures. For his success with some of the largest mountains of stone, he was worshipped as a god in the ancient Egyptian culture. So, kids, stay in school.
What I believe Imhotep did was use gravity. The later pyramids were built in man-made valleys, where the stones could be moved down an incline and then set at a 52-degree angle. That way, instead of laying the stone horizontally, they pushed into each other on a downward incline, relieving vertical weight and reducing the stones’ ability to crush each other.
Remember, Egyptians didn’t have block and tackle, didn’t use wheels to move heavy loads and didn’t have metal harder than copper. They had a lot of laborers, spent much less time watching TV or staring at their cellphones, and filled in each level of the valley as the pyramids grew in height. Great question!
© 2026 Monte Leeper
Readers are encouraged to send questions to yourhousedr@aol.com, with “Herald question” in the subject line, or to Herald Homes, 2 Endo Blvd., Garden City, NY 11530, Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.
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