Providing Project ECHO® to Support Our Community in Addressing Child Mental Health Needs When and Where it Matters Most
Written by: Elizabeth Newlin, MD
As a mental health clinician, it has never been more important to reach out to our community. Families are struggling with exposure to heightened economic hardship, trauma, and increased environmental challenges. Teachers, school counselors, and primary care clinicians are our children’s mental health first responders. Families rely on them for help, and benefit from their support and guidance as they seek mental health resources for their children. Taking those first steps to say, “I can’t fix this for my child,” is extraordinarily difficult for most parents. We now have a mechanism to help our mental health first-responders make it easier for parents, families, and children.
Through Project ECHO®, specialists in academic medical centers meet in a virtual format with community-based clinicians. There, sharing different experience and knowledge takes place in a standardized format that promotes engagement, the development of trust, and a shared learning community. Created in 2003 at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center, Project ECHO® provides a template and platform for connecting specialists in academic health centers with providers in communities where it’s often difficult to access resources. Online monthly sessions provide up to date information on health concerns and a forum for participants to present clinical cases for feedback and assistance. We use this telementoring format to work with school counselors and primary care clinicians to identify and share vital information and resources when and where they are most needed.
At the Faillace Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, two new Project ECHO®s will bring front line school mental health counselors and pediatric primary care providers additional resources and support related to the mental and behavioral health needs of youth. Our team of mental health experts are from a diverse set of professional backgrounds. Working collaboratively, our team will provide monthly Project ECHO® sessions, first with Child Psychiatry for Primary Care Providers starting in July and then with School Mental Health beginning in August as school resumes. While our academic mental health professionals bring up to date mental health content and share this with attendees for consultation they also gain critical knowledge from front-line providers living and caring for children in our community.
Our Project ECHO® efforts are part of a suite of new clinical programs funded under Senate Bill 11, passed in our 86th Texas legislature. With Senate Bill 11, there is a transformation of child mental health services underway in Texas and the timing could not have been better.
While research shows that one in every five US children experience mental illness, only half are likely to receive an intervention. Limited access to child psychiatric services can leave families, school systems, and primary care providers feeling frustrated or even hopeless. Various systemic barriers as well as factors such as low reimbursement rates by payors have all contributed to the frustration families experience accessing child mental health services. One factor that holds potential to be remedied by SB11 sponsored new programs is our ability to efficiently and effectively triage youth requiring behavioral health services. Of children who are experiencing a mental health crisis, two-thirds have mild to moderate concerns that can be managed without ever requiring a referral to a child psychiatrist so long as their primary care provider is adequately supported.
Through Project ECHO®, clinicians have the opportunity to meaningfully engage and learn with those mental health first-responders who have the most potential to impact all of our children’s’ home, school, and healthcare environments. We are also able to work together to triage and ensure access to care for the most at-risk children who require specialized child psychiatric services. With the support of the new programs funded under Senate Bill 11, we are hopeful that wait times for critical mental health services will be reduced and access to needed mental health care will improve for all children in Texas.