Physician at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates
Team member with the Trauma Research Foundation
“This is a model that can easily be scaled to address the huge need for healing for substance use disorders and other mental health issues that are so prevalent in our society.”
In recent years, the United States has experienced over 100,000 fatal drug overdoses annually, equating to roughly one preventable death every few minutes.
Recent data also show that veteran suicide remains alarmingly high, with rates averaging close to one death per hour. Active service member suicide rates are also deeply concerning.
Physician, Addiction Expert, Speaker, Best-Selling Author
“All the modalities, principles, and intentions that Project New Day is bringing together, I’m absolutely convinced, can help many people move forward and heal not just the behavior, but the trauma that underlies the behavior.”
The Project New Day Program emerged from our collective recognition of the deep-rooted mental health challenges affecting a growing number of people in our society. At the same time, we believe meaningful, positive change is possible. We are committed to improving the well-being of countless individuals through practical knowledge, structured support, and community connection. Is this ambitious? Absolutely. Impossible? We believe not. With the knowledge, experience, resources, and strong community support behind us, we are prepared to make a real difference.
Drawing on personal experience, careful observation, review of scientific literature, and insights from respected professionals in the field, we believe that the combination of knowledge-based life coaching and structured community support can help many people move toward a clearer path of healing and growth.
To carry out our mission, we have:
Developed an innovative, teachable, and scalable model that integrates knowledge-based life coaching and community support. This model is available to interested organizations worldwide at no cost.
Demonstrated promising outcomes. Our 2024 and 2025 internal study results showed meaningful reductions in self-reported depression, anxiety, alcohol use, and related challenges among participating combat veterans (see our Outcomes and Testimonials page).
Created two certification programs for life coaches and community facilitators to promote consistency, safety, and high standards of support (see our Training page).
Established a network of trained life coaches available at minimal cost to increase accessibility (see our Training page).
Launched free weekly Zoom community support sessions, providing an ongoing resource for those seeking connection and encouragement (see our Community page).
Project New Day is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation composed of dedicated officers and directors committed to sharing our integrated model for healing, growth, and thriving at no cost.
Our program model is a scalable, organized, and shareable framework based on our knowledge, lived experience, and ongoing learning. We have seen that knowledge-based life coaching can provide meaningful support for many individuals, and that structured community meetings can be a powerful source of encouragement and connection.
As we grow, we aim to expand delivery of our program to combat veterans through certified veteran coaches, with support from mission-aligned partner organizations.
Project New Day is not a psychotherapeutic or medical program. Rather, it is an educational and supportive initiative designed to share practical knowledge and foster personal growth through life coaching and online community meetings. We have demonstrated that our program can be meaningfully helpful to individuals facing challenges related to stress, addiction, or trauma. But it is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health treatment.
Our directors and staff are not acting as medical practitioners, addiction specialists, or trauma clinicians. We are concerned citizens committed to responsibly organizing and sharing knowledge, guided by the perspectives of experienced professionals across relevant fields.
We believe that, when used appropriately, our program model can support individuals as they work through the effects of unresolved trauma and move toward lives of greater freedom, purpose, and fulfillment.
We have designed our program with participant safety, well-being, and scalability in mind. Its structure allows for cost-effective and responsible expansion over time.
Our purpose is simple and sincere: to make a positive difference in the lives of those seeking a better path forward.
This is Project New Day.
Compassion and understanding are essential when supporting individuals struggling with PTSD and addiction. As Gabor Maté, MD, bestselling author, speaker, and clinician known for his work on trauma and addiction, emphasizes, the question “is not why the addiction, but why the pain?” He suggests that many addictive behaviors develop as attempts to cope with emotional pain rooted in earlier life experiences, including childhood adversity.
Research supports the view that early-life adversity can influence mental health outcomes later in life. A large meta-analysis of over 50 samples found that greater exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is associated with higher severity of PTSD symptoms among military personnel after deployment. This relationship appears to reflect both the combined influence of ACEs and combat trauma on later symptom severity and a measurable interaction between these types of experiences.
Our own observations align with these findings. We have often seen that individuals with histories of childhood trauma, whether acute, chronic, or complex, may develop deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and behavior that include constricted or pessimistic cognitive styles, difficulties forming trusting relationships, and a sense of disconnection from themselves and others. Such patterns frequently accompany not only PTSD and addiction but also anxiety, depression, social isolation, and other challenges.
Healing, from this perspective, involves expanding emotional flexibility and fostering supportive connections, allowing individuals to explore new patterns of thought and behavior in safe and constructive ways. This understanding informs the design of the Project New Day Program model, which brings together life coaching, community support, and educational exposure to therapeutic approaches participants can pursue further with qualified professionals if they choose.
The following image is a graphical representation of the Project New Day Program model. The model may be thought of as comprising three categories: Healing, Supporting Elements, and Training. Each category contains a set of building blocks, which are linked to web pages with additional information.
Navigate by clicking the squares.
Navigate by clicking the squares.
Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
“When I learned about the Project New Day Program, I felt it was very much in alignment with what I believe and what is important to me. Central to that is how you have compassion and caring for human suffering at its core.“
The Project New Day Healing and Addiction Philosophies comprise two pillars:
Peer-reviewed research suggests that each of these pillars, individually, can play a supportive role in trauma recovery and in reducing addictive behaviors.
More specifically the power of this combination comes from the following:
A structured series of knowledge-based life coaching sessions in which Project New Day–certified coaches foster a sense of connection by listening deeply and engaging participants with unconditional positive regard. At the same time, coaches use our proprietary, knowledge-based coaching model to introduce practical, life-enhancing tools that open hearts and minds to new possibilities.
The program brings together twelve weekly coaching sessions followed by ongoing weekly community meetings, all held on Zoom, to help participants integrate new perspectives and positive changes into their daily lives.
Weekly Community Group Zoom sessions are led by Project New Day certified group facilitators. Virtually all well-designed recovery programs stress the need for structure and follow-on community support. This support is especially important as a core tenet of the Project New Day Program is the adoption of a continuous growth mindset for ongoing well-being.
Additional information on the Project New Day Healing Philosophy.
Additional information on the Project New Day Addiction Philosophy.
The end goal is for our program to save thousands of lives and improve many more.
Here is how Project New Day plans to expand access to the program model and increase awareness of its work:
Engaging credentialed life coaches to lead group, knowledge-based Zoom sessions, making the program more accessible and scalable than traditional one-to-one clinical services
Funding the initial cohorts to further evaluate and refine the program model
Promoting the program to build awareness of its impact and scalability
Pursuing fundraising efforts to support broader implementation as the program grows
And ultimately, sharing our field-tested program model at no cost with organizations worldwide, for the benefit of those seeking healing, growth, and connection.
Additional information on Scaling and Promotion.
The Project New Day Resources page contains diagnostic assessments, coaching worksheets, group facilitation forms, and numerous documents that pertain to PTSD, addiction, and recovery.
Additional information on Project New Day’s Resources.
Project New Day (PND) certified master coaches and community facilitators must complete an extensive suite of online training courses in which they learn a structured sequence of supportive methods. From that sequence, program participants learn tools designed to help loosen rigid thinking patterns, create new possibilities, and strengthen their sense of connection with themselves, others, and their environment. This structured approach ensures the PND program is effective and repeatable.
Project New Day Coaches are to be certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the gold standard in coaching, or equivalent. In addition, to become a Project New Day Certified Master Coach, coaches must receive certifications described on our Training page.
Project New Day Certified Community Group Facilitators are not required to be ICF certified. Instead, they will be required to receive certifications described on our Training page.
By combining our lived experience and the wisdom of our veteran leaders in this field, we have created a rapidly scalable, innovative healing program using:
The goal is to help reduce suffering and, over time, contribute to preventing loss of life by continuing to evaluate and strengthen the effectiveness of this model, promoting it, and making it freely available to the world.