The University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center has created Project ECHO in an effort to improve access to high quality specialty health care in underserved and rural areas.
The center recently hosted the second global MetaECHO Conference in Albuquerque, gathering together nearly 500 people from around the world involved in the global ECHO movement, all committed to the goal of impacting one billion lives by 2025.
Director of Replication for Project ECHO Erika Harding said the project was originally designed to focus on expanding specialty care for the citizens of New Mexico.
When the project produced so much success, it was quickly embraced and replicated by 82 medical schools and other organizations - including the Department of Defense and the Veteran’s Health Administration - across 12 countries.
ECHO Communications & Editorial Affairs Andrea Bradford said specialists involved in Project ECHO share their knowledge with participating community providers through presentations, discussions and recommendations.
Project ECHO was started in 2003, but national replication of the ECHO model began in 2009 with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at the University of Washington.
“This demonstrated treatment utilizing the ECHO model is as safe and effective as treatment provided at an academic medical center,” said Bradford.
The idea of ECHO was created by Sanjeev Arora, a UNM gastroenterologist and hepatologist who wanted to have a greater impact and treat more patients than he was able to initially see due to scheduling constraints, Harding said.
Arora created the ECHO model to share his knowledge of the treatment of hepatitis C with primary care clinicians in places where treatment of the virus wasn’t known, she said.
Before branching out the different type of special care provided by ECHO, the main focus was solely on the treatment of hepatitis C.
“ECHO originally was a project to mentor and support New Mexico providers to treat HCV. It then expanded into a wide menu of topics to teach New Mexico clinicians and Community Health Workers, and thereby benefit New Mexico communities and patients,” said Harding. “Along the way, the ECHO model was adopted and implemented by many other medical schools and organizations who use it to telementor and support their own providers in their own states and regions in dealing with many common, complex diseases, conditions and problems.”
The majority of the people engaged in Project ECHO are specialists who use the model to share their knowledge. These people are called ECHO “hubs”and community providers who are using the model to expand their learning and develop specialty knowledge to benefit their patients, referred to as ECHO “spokes”, Harding said.
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In addition, she said there are many other individuals and organizations involved in ECHO around the world; some are teachers and educational experts who use ECHO within the education sphere rather than within medicine or health.
The ECHO Institute, the central hub for the project located at the HSC, employs 100 faculty and staff, and offers more than 20 regular teleECHO clinics or programs for New Mexico-based providers, with topics ranging from HCV care, HIV/AIDS, addiction, chronic pain, bone health, high risk pregnancy and many other topics.
The specialists involved in Project ECHO plan to increase the project’s expansion further than it already has, Harding said
“We hope to establish ECHO hubs in every country, expanding access to best practice medical expertise for everyone, and educational best practices, so that every child gets the best possible teaching in math, science and language,” she said.
Harding is proud of the work and impact that Project ECHO has achieved so far, and looks forward to continuing the sharing and gathering specialty care knowledge with those already involved in the project as well as those soon to be involved.
“We are so honored to do the work that we do – using Project ECHO to serve New Mexico, and sharing the model with organizations around the world that want to amplify their impact and share their expertise with others,“ she said.
Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com on Twitter @DailyLobo.
