The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has awarded a three-year, $5-million grant to a New Mexico-based program that interactive technology and information on medicine to provide specialty care for patients with serious, chronic conditions who live in rural and underserved areas.
The grant will be awarded to Project ECHO – an acronym for Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes – a program based out of the University of New Mexico’s Department of Internal Medicine that "uses evidence-based medicine and telehealth technology to bring specialty care for chronic complex diseases to patients in rural and underserved areas," according to a press release announcing the grant.
Project ECHO also used parts of its funding to train doctors, nurses and physician’s assistants to address the needs of those living in rural and underserved areas with the hopes of creating better care in impoverished areas than is currently available with the current health care.
"Millions of Americans suffer from debilitating, chronic illnesses that could be treated if resources were available," said Nancy Barrand, a special adviser for program development at the RWJF. "The ECHO model teaches us that we can leverage our existing health care resources to provide safe, effective care to patients in their communities, regardless of where they are."
The three year grant provided by the RWJF will support the development of a new program modeled after ECHO’s current program to treat other serious diseases such as diabetes, substance abuse, asthma, rheumatology, high-risk pregnancy and other as well as others. The new program’s development will begin at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"We are extending the capacity and reach of the health care system by engaging more colleagues in highly needed specialties," said Sanjeev Arora, M.D. and Project ECHO’s director as well as the executive vice chairman of UNM’s Department of Medicine. "We believe that this approach can help bring best practice specialty care to millions more Americans."
A former vice chairman of the War Production Board and chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation as appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, the RWJF was founded by Robert Wood Johnson and is the U.S.’s largest philanthropic organization that devotes itself exclusively to addressing pressing health and health care issues facing Americans.
