Bringing Together Providers to Broaden Care Access for Children in Geographically Dispersed Areas
Families who are geographically dispersed, highly mobile, or military-connected face barriers in accessing consistent care for children with mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral health concerns. Telehealth can help address those barriers by improving care delivery and building provider capacity to meet the unique needs of these populations.
The newly launched University of Minnesota Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB) project is designed to innovate on the use of technology to overcome barriers to accessing mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral health care for children and their families, and to improve the readiness of care providers in using technology and research-infused practices. Through a Biden Administration appropriation to MIDB that aims to lower barriers to care for these families, the Department of Defense study, A Research Collaboratory to Explore Best Practices for Expanding Access to Care Through Expansion and Support of Telehealth Care for Children and Families with Behavioral Health Needs, is led by Dr. Jessica Simacek, principal investigator and director of the TeleOutreach Center and the Service Hub, and Dr. Damien Fair, co-principal investigator and co-director of MIDB.
One dedicated focus is the development and expansion of provider capacity building throughout Minnesota using the Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) model. The MIDB team hosts a series of talks in a virtual collaborative forum where University of Minnesota specialists facilitate synchronous “hub and spoke” connections with providers who support rural, highly mobile, and military-connected families to discuss best practices with didactic and case-based learning.
“In the ‘hub and spoke’ model, MIDB creates a clear hub, where we have interdisciplinary professionals and clinical providers. Throughout this project, we are learning more about how to leverage technology to help allocate the care and support that children and families need to get it to them when and where they need it and with the highest quality,” said Simacek. “This Project ECHO series and some of our related initiatives are helping to build the community and capacity of providers who are serving families in these locations.”
MIDB’s TeleOutreach Service Hub previously piloted ECHO in northeast Minnesota and is currently offering a longitudinal ECHO that includes focused and extended discussion on learning priorities with mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral health concerns, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Participants include social workers, school counselors, psychologists, nurse practitioners, educators, and early intervention specialists who represent different provider organizations such as community health centers, early childhood mental health consultation programs, and private practice.
Additionally, the TeleOutreach Center team is conducting regional ECHOs in southern Minnesota and west-central Minnesota. The team is also collaborating with the University’s Extension to establish a satellite site at the North Central Regional Outreach Center in Grand Rapids, Minn.
To date, the TeleOutreach Center has engaged over 100 providers throughout the state, approximately 20-30 providers often participating in each ECHO. The next phase of outreach includes increasing engagement of military-connected providers through collaboration with the Center for Deployment Psychology and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
The project is supported by collaborations with MIDB Service Hubs, including Analytics, Community Engagement and Education, and Informatics. And other University-wide collaborators, including Extension, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, the College of Education and Human Development, Educational Technology Innovations, Health Sciences Technology, and the Institute on Community Integration.
The MIDB TeleOutreach ECHO is one of four University of Minnesota-led Project ECHOs.
“The MIDB was designed and originated based on the basic principle that by bringing together University experts with community knowledge and our public institutions, we can advance brain health in our youth across the state and beyond,” said Dr. Fair. “The Department of Defense work exemplifies that vision and highlights what can be accomplished when we work together.”
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