Retired programs

Arizona State University (ASU) and AHCCCS partnered to establish a state-wide, multi-disciplinary collaborative initiative aimed at scaling education and best practices in Gender-Specific Treatment (GST) for patients with substance use disorder (SUD) through Project ECHO. Over 630,000 drug overdose deaths were recorded in the U.S. between 1999 and 2016, emphasizing the imperative need to address SUD. While substance use had traditionally been viewed as a male-centric issue, the gender gap had been closing, with women increasingly represented among individuals with SUD. Research underscored the heightened risks women faced from substance use, emphasizing the need for gender-specific considerations in diagnosis and treatment decisions. Effective treatment programs, including medication for opioid use disorder treatment (MOUD), were available, but there was a growing recognition of the importance of gender-based approaches. This ECHO program aimed to enhance provider capacity in understanding SUD across the lifespan, reflecting evolving research trends and promoting gender-sensitive treatment modalities.

The goal of the Dermoscopy ECHO was to teach beginning and advanced dermoscopic technique and interpretation to clinical healthcare providers, including dermatologists and primary care providers. This ECHO program aimed to equip clinical healthcare providers with the skills and knowledge to increase their confidence in identification and decision-making for dermatological conditions to address the gap in the number of providers performing skin exams and making decisions about further intervention. Case-based learning strategies were woven into each Dermoscopy ECHO session to help learners develop the skills they needed to both effectively use and interpret the dermatoscope. Ultimately, participants were able to make decisions about follow-up referrals, leading to enhanced patient care.

Arizona State University (ASU), USAA, and the Phoenix VA Health Care System collaborated to establish a state-wide, multi-disciplinary partnership aimed at scaling education and practice in Veteran-specific health issues through Project ECHO. The Veteran Community Care ECHO facilitated collaboration with VA community care partners to enhance care provided to Veterans across medical and behavioral health settings. By connecting community providers with a team of Veteran health experts, the program addressed gaps in cultural and clinical competencies through mentorship, case consultations, and best-practice sharing. Participants consistently reported high satisfaction levels, with an average rating of 4.77 out of 5 (n=245), affirming the program’s efficacy and value. They noted increases in knowledge (4.47) and confidence (4.36) in providing care to Veteran patients, as well as the relevance of program topics to their practice needs (4.43) and the likelihood of integrating optimized practice behaviors (4.35) in post-session surveys.

The Long-COVID ECHO program disseminated new and emerging best practices for treating Long COVID Syndrome at the primary care level, addressing various symptom presentations (cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, vascular, etc.) and unique considerations for special populations (pediatrics, geriatrics, Native American, low income, rural, etc.). Due to the prevalence of individuals considered medically underserved or living in areas with a shortage of health professionals, many patients had faced challenges in accessing necessary care. These challenges worsened as the complexity of care needs increased, particularly in cases of Long-COVID syndrome. In collaboration with the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, this ECHO series aimed to equip clinicians with the tools to address the needs of Long COVID patients and enhance their skills in effectively treating the populations they served. Participant satisfaction across the three cohorts was reported at 4.8 out of 5, with an average increase in knowledge rating of 4.67 out of 5.

Participants identified how caregivers' well-being supported the emotional well-being of young children. They learned about self-care practices that could enhance overall well-being and emotional availability. The program emphasized recognizing one's emotions and understanding how these emotions affected interactions with others. Additionally, participants gained insight into the relationship between their emotions and their ability to be present with others, ultimately fostering a more supportive and emotionally healthy environment for both teachers and children.

The purpose of this series of ECHO training was to model ways for adults to support and teach phonological and phonemic awareness skills to children and to provide the opportunity to gather and create materials to use in children’s play and practice that would promote these skills. We provided support, tools, materials, and resources for early childhood professionals to promote oral language development in the children they served. We explored strategies to engage all children in daily conversations at appropriate developmental levels. These strategies promoted responsive, high-quality adult-child conversations that supported oral language and early literacy development and deepened learning opportunities.

The program "Literacy Rich Centers and Classroom Environments" aimed to address the issue highlighted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which reported that 34 percent of fourth-grade students were below basic reading level. Recognizing the correlation between a lack of diverse and plentiful reading materials and low literacy levels, the program sought to equip educators with the tools to assess and enhance the quality of their classroom libraries. The goal of the program was for trainees to list the necessary materials and describe the physical arrangement of their classrooms or centers to create literacy-rich environments for their children. As a result of completing the course, participants transformed their environments to be more conducive to literacy than they were prior to the course, thereby fostering better academic success among their students.

Our mission was to connect with our community partners to collaborate and share evidence-based practices in order to create future speech-language pathologists, educators, and healthcare providers with critical problem-solving skills and expertise. Through ECHO’s model of "all teach and all learn," future SLPs, educators, and healthcare providers developed collaborative clinical problem-solving expertise to improve services for all individuals with communication disorders. The specialist teams mentored and shared their expertise across a virtual network via case-based learning, enabling future speech-language pathologists, educators, and healthcare providers to improve educational and health outcomes for all the people they served.

Empowering early childhood professionals through collaborative learning and innovation

The Building Expertise with Early Childhood Professionals ECHO program goal is to invigorate early childhood personnel at the entry level by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and the cultivation of best practices and service delivery models for professionals who work with children aged birth to 6 and their families, with the aim of fostering systemic change. The topics covered will include, but are not limited to, early intervention parenting strategies, ethical telepractice strategies, nutrition and feeding, language and cognitive development, management of complex medical, developmental, and behavioral issues, and multidisciplinary strategies pertaining to child development and family support.