Table 5 Supportive quotations of the experiences of mentors and mentees with JIA who participated in the iP2P program

Fulfillment and Support Through Shared Experience

“We just got along really well. I think she understood what I was going through and she talked about her experiences, we talked about things that like we like to do.” –14-year old female diagnosed with Polyarthritis

“I just wish that this was something that was there when I was a kid, because with something like arthritis, it’s not uncommon for people our age to have it but the first time that I was in a room with people who were like me that had arthritis was when I did the mentoring training. I think it’s so valuable for them to kind of have that representation and to talk to someone who gets it, and that’s not going to kind of like, sugarcoat it in any way.” – 25-year-old female mentor

Enhancing program delivery

“I guess maybe with some of the surveys. Not everything on there was completely relevant to me. I don't know if that's something I disliked, it was just something I noticed. Just being like-well, I'm 18, so I'm an adult now. Some of the questions did seem like they were aimed more for a younger audience, I would say.” – 17-year old female diagnosed with Oligoarthritis

“After training, when you get your first mentee, it does kind of feel like you're like just jumping into the deep end, you know, it's a new experience, you have no idea. And obviously mentoring itself is training but I think getting feedback, especially from someone who's listening to the calls would have been great in the sense that like it's either like confirmation, “Yeah, you're doing great” or it's like “You can change it up a little bit in this way, and let's try to help a bit”, you know, I think that would be really, really helpful.” – 19-year-old female mentor

Someone who, like, gets it and that you can swap stories with a little bit too. And you know, like, share some things that have like happened to you, or like some things that like maybe have happened in mentoring.” – 25-year old female mentor

“I was reading about medications that I had never been on, and so then it was really interesting to kind of go like “Oh, I didn’t even think about that”, or “I didn’t know about that at all”. And so, it might be kind of valuable, in the training, it might feel a bit redundant, but just to go over some things like that. You’re going to be mentoring people who have a very different arthritis experience than you and you won’t know entirely what it’s like for them so that could actually be really valuable.” – 25-year-old female mentor

Strategies to Boost Engagement

“I would say like an 8 or a 9. I was excited for the calls and made sure that I was like thinking about any questions that my mentor wanted me to consider through-like between our calls.” – 17-year old female diagnosed with Oligoarthritis

“I had one person that I was mentoring that I was like, “What do you really want to talk about”, and he was like “Dinosaurs?”, and I was like, "Okay, hey, alright”. And so, I did– one time, we did a whole call dedicated to dinosaurs, talking about dinosaurs, but then I kind of like wove it in, because I did research on what dinosaurs had arthritis. Turns out, a couple of dinosaurs actually had arthritis. So I did a little bit of research beforehand and we ended up talking– I somehow bridged, dinosaurs and arthritis together, and so like sometimes that's just how it is, where you're just like, “Okay, you wanna talk about dinosaurs, let’s go for it!” – 25-year old female mentor