Since March 2020, Project ECHO has contributed to an innovative partnership led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (HHS ASPR). In a first-of-its-kind collaborative bringing together more than two dozen health professional societies and organizations in 50 states, Project ECHO combined digital learning instructional design with implementation expertise to establish a successful framework for this emergency response education and training initiative, achieving critical just-in-time learning at scale during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, based on the success of that initial partnership, a new HHS/ASPR Project ECHO Clinical Readiness Rounds program is underway. Taking place on the first Tuesday of every month, this learning series will focus on emerging threats in public health to support the health care workforce, with as-needed emergency sessions.
Pandemic Response
In March 2020, HHS ASPR reached out to Project ECHO to develop a real-time peer-to-peer clinical education initiative as the COVID-19 pandemic was evolving. Project ECHO’s support enabled the COVID-19 Clinical Rounds to launch within just two weeks, with sessions conducted three times per week for the first year of the program.
This unique collaboration included participants from all over the United States and more than 100 countries, offering just-in-time learning sessions focused on preparing providers to meet three critical and dynamic concerns in COVID-19 emergency response care: out-of-hospital COVID-19 patient care, emergency department care and inpatient critical care.
Partners included the American College of Emergency Physicians, American Academy of Emergency Nurse Practitioners, the American Academy of Medical Colleges, the Trauma Center Association of America, and academic centers, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Emory Healthcare and Mount Sinai Hospital.
ECHO Innovation
The COVID-19 Clinical Rounds established an innovative structure for online learning during a health crisis, with more than 1,000 people attending each session and up to 20 expert speakers offering perspective and real-time knowledge. The program prioritized presentations by experts who were living in areas with significant COVID-19 outbreaks.
The ECHO Institute combined digital learning instructional design with implementation expertise to establish a successful framework for this education and training initiative. Building off a traditional large-scale webinar format, ECHO integrated presentations from experts—offering timely information from the frontlines of the pandemic—with polls and Q&As, in order to generate a sense of community between attendees.
In addition to supporting a dynamic emergency health response, the COVID-19 Clinical Rounds also encouraged nuanced discussions on related topics:
- Clinical care topics: best practices in COVID-19 treatment, ventilation management, and vaccines
- Support for concurrent disasters: wildfires, hurricanes and civil unrest
- Personal topics, including: burnout, grief related to the deaths of colleagues, and mental health
ECHO Impacts
Project ECHO’s 2020-2022 partnership with HHS/ASPR reached nearly 77,000 participants across three programs:
- COVID-19 Clinical Rounds: The initial pandemic response program offered three tracks in Emergency Medical Services, Critical Care and Emergency Department.
- 177 interactive webinar sessions were held with participation from nearly 55,000 medical professionals,
- Session recordings were viewed 17,000 times (as of February 2024), and
- Surveys indicate 89% of clinicians “strongly agreed” that they would join Clinical Rounds again, in the event of an emergency.
- COVID-19 Outpatient Therapeutics: Eleven interactive webinar sessions focused on treatment for COVID-19 using monoclonal antibodies; nearly 5,000 medical professionals participated.
- Telemedicine in Ambulatory Care: Ten interactive webinars focused on best and promising practices to help integrate telemedicine into ambulatory care; nearly 17,000 providers participated.
Register for the recently launched 2024 Project ECHO Clinical Readiness Rounds program on iECHO.org. With questions, email the ECHO program team.
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