Two ECHO Projects Get Funding Boost With Help From The State

Two programs that link health providers with on-the-ground experts will expand with help from the state. The work builds on the success of previous ECHO projects in Indiana. 

The state’s first ECHO project trained more providers around Indiana to treat Hepatitis C. Two newer projects will now receive nearly $1 million from the Indiana State Department of Health.  One focuses on training peer health educators in prison.

Dr. Joan Duwve, an associate professor at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI, leads the ECHO center. She says the other program is called Indiana Communities Advancing Recovery Efforts or IN CAREs. 

"We’ll be working with community teams, and those teams will be really interdisciplinary and be comprised of community leaders who are working together to address the opioid epidemic in their communities," says Duwve. 

Remote training sessions include stigma reduction and naloxone access.

Duwve says they will remotely train community teams on best practices to reduce opioid addiction.

"So we’re bringing people together so they can have those conversations and together come up with plans to move their communities forward," says Duwve. 

The funds are part of a larger federal grant to reduce overdose deaths. 

Contact Jill at jsheridan@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @JillASheridan.