MCD Global Health recently received a five-year, $475,000 per year Technology-enabled Collaborative Learning Program (TCLP) award from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

The goal of this cooperative agreement is to expand the reach and impact of MCD’s behavioral health programs through ECHO® and other technologies, with partner Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, bringing together two ECHO® hubs under TCLP.

For several years, MCD’s Collaborative for Advancing Rural Excellence and Equity (CARE2), a telehealth technology-enabled learning program, has used Project ECHO® design and implementation to bring the latest research and practices to the most rural providers.

Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) originated at the University of New Mexico and is a lifelong learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes medical education and increases workforce capacity to provide best-practice specialty care and reduce health disparities.

Since 2018, MCD has been an official Project ECHO® hub, embracing this model to share knowledge, leading multiple programs across diverse focus areas.

"Persons in both active use and in recovery deserve to see health care providers who are up to date on the latest research in SUD and co-occurring illnesses,” Michaela Fascione (image at left), program manager of MCD’s Technology-enabled Programs, said. “Through the Project ECHO® model, we are able to use technology to reach the most rural providers to supply them with this information."

Similarly, MCD’s Rural Behavioral Health Workforce Center (RBHWC) addresses opioid and substance use disorder crises through expansion and capacity strengthening in the rural workforce.

The new TCLP will integrate resources and experiences from the RBHWC with best practices from CARE2 and Project ECHO.

Included in this initiative is the virtually guided Recovery Jobs for Beginners (RJB) focused on accelerating a person’s entry into and progression in behavioral health careers. RJB is designed for people with lived experience, affected others, and allies who live and work in rural areas. With funding from the TCLP, the RJB will be able to expand into New Hampshire and Vermont.

"At long last, the TCLP award will allow MCD to weave together workforce and telehealth projects in service of an overall better integrated and more effective mental health and substance use health care system in northern New England," Catherine Sanders (image at right), MCD senior program manager of the RBHWC, said.

HRSA awarded more than $18 million to eight grantees to expand the use of technology-based collaborative learning for health care providers and other professionals. The program aims to improve retention of health care providers and increase access to health care services in rural, frontier, tribal and underserved populations.