Project ECHO’s designation as one of the newest World Health Organization Collaborating Centers, and the very first Center for Digital Learning in Health Emergencies, is much more than a title. On the African continent, Project ECHO and WHO partnerships have shown the capacity to meet health demands across incredibly complex systems, including governmental bodies, local aid, community knowledge and stakeholders, and often limited resources in highly rural settings.
Project ECHO understands the world deserves better care. As a WHO Collaborating Center for Digital Learning in Health Emergencies, Project ECHO partners to ensure every person has a chance to receive equitable health care, and to thrive.
Creating Impact with Digital Learning
In the three years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization and Project ECHO have an ongoing collaboration to offer programs combating health emergencies and sharing best practices for practitioners working in remote, often isolated settings, at a scale never before available to these care providers. Health care providers have logged more than 178,000 attendances in 415 digital learning sessions, with instruction offered in more than 10 languages.
Innovation at Scale during Crisis
Now as an official Collaborating Center, the focus of the WHO and Project ECHO partnership has sharpened toward the WHO’s critical, long-term goals. To promote digital learning that strengthens emergency response, ECHO will deliver digital learning solutions for all WHO member states and support intensive workforce capacity building, enabling equity in WHO-backed learning and provider training – across regional and local contexts. Additionally, Project ECHO’s work with WHO will continue to prioritize access to training in low-resource and vulnerable settings.
Currently, Project ECHO and WHO work together in more than 235 countries and regions. Program collaborations include emergency response, nursing and midwifery, public health laboratory support and antimicrobial resistance, immunizations, and infection prevention and control.
About WHO Collaborating Centers
WHO Collaborating Centers are institutions such as research institutes, parts of universities or academies, which are designated by the WHO Director-General to carry out activities in support of the Organization’s programs. Currently there are over 800 WHO Collaborating Centers in over 80 Member States working with WHO on areas such as nursing, occupational health, communicable diseases, nutrition, mental health, chronic diseases and health technologies.