McBride Jennifer, Edwards Patrick, Odom Mindi, Killewald Rich
Data and Impact Reporting, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Project ECHO, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
J Med Educ Curric Dev. 2025 Jul 17;12:23821205251358088. doi: 10.1177/23821205251358088. eCollection 2025 Jan-Dec.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates over 2 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the United States in 2024. We utilize the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) Model developed by the University of New Mexico's ECHO Institute to address cancer-related knowledge gaps between healthcare professionals in underserved communities and specialists. By connecting healthcare professionals through a virtual telementoring community, ECHO programs are designed to increase local expertise and improve patient care.
This quantitative investigation evaluates the effectiveness of four ACS ECHO programs focused on cancer care across 2023 and 2024 by examining participants' engagement, likelihood to use what was presented, as well as changes in knowledge and confidence.
The ACS ECHO programs engaged 431 unique participants, averaging 108 participants per program. Of those participants, 59% were planning to use the information presented within a month. On average, participants' knowledge and confidence had mean increases on a 5-point scale of +0.84 and +0.77, respectively, reflecting participants' readiness and ability to apply what they learned into practice.
These findings can inform insights for promoting ECHO program sustainability and directions for future research, including integrating qualitative insights to deepen our contextual understanding of ACS ECHO program effectiveness. While previous evaluations of ECHO programs have solely relied on qualitative approaches, the quantitative methods used in this study can offer an objective approach to evaluating model implementation and program impact.
美国癌症协会（ACS）估计，2024年美国将有超过200万例新癌症病例被诊断出来。我们利用新墨西哥大学ECHO研究所开发的社区医疗保健成果扩展（ECHO）模型，来解决服务不足社区的医疗保健专业人员与专家之间与癌症相关的知识差距。通过虚拟远程指导社区将医疗保健专业人员联系起来，ECHO项目旨在提高当地专业知识水平并改善患者护理。
这项定量调查通过检查参与者的参与度、使用所呈现内容的可能性以及知识和信心的变化，评估了2023年至2024年期间四个专注于癌症护理的ACS ECHO项目的有效性。
ACS ECHO项目吸引了431名不同的参与者，每个项目平均有108名参与者。在这些参与者中，59%的人计划在一个月内使用所提供的信息。平均而言，参与者的知识和信心在5分制上分别平均提高了0.84分和0.77分，这反映了参与者将所学知识应用于实践的意愿和能力。
这些发现可为促进ECHO项目可持续性的见解以及未来研究方向提供参考，包括整合定性见解以加深我们对ACS ECHO项目有效性的背景理解。虽然之前对ECHO项目的评估仅依赖定性方法，但本研究中使用的定量方法可以为评估模型实施和项目影响提供一种客观方法。
