With nine cities participating in City Cancer Challenge (C/Can) across four continents, coordinating insight-sharing and collaboration is critical. To further strengthen this effort, C/Can has partnered with Project ECHO to set up a series of virtual teleECHO™ sessions to enable medical professionals in C/Can cities to learn from each other, as well as from international experts in the cancer field.
The programme allows participants to:
- Increase their knowledge of up-to-date, evidence-based quality cancer care
- Acquire practical knowledge on successful strategies to advance specific cancer care policies
- Contribute to an international network of experts within their field by sharing experiences and best practices
Project ECHO (Extension of Community Healthcare Outcomes) was started in 2003 by Dr. Sanjeev Arora, a liver disease specialist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to improve his patients’ access to local specialists. Project ECHO has since developed the ECHO model™, which allows community health providers to learn best practices for chronic disease management based on expert advice and case-based learning. Project ECHO aims to impact one billion lives by 2025 by working with organisations, like C/Can, around the world to replicate the ECHO model™.
“Project ECHO is a movement to democratise knowledge and amplify the capacity to implement best practice care for underserved people all over the world,” says Dr Arora, Director and Founder of Project ECHO, adding: “Partnerships, like that with C/Can, are essential to us reaching the last mile of cancer care in underserved communities world-wide. C/Can and Project ECHO’s collaboration will significantly contribute to our shared goal of building strong professional networks within which everybody teaches and all learn, while upskilling healthcare professionals in their communities to improve cancer outcomes locally.”
Starting at the beginning of June, with the support of Roche, C/Can will launch its pilot teleECHO™ programme with a series of virtual sessions in English and Spanish built around eight topics. These topics represent critical areas of cancer care trending in C/Can cities with a strong focus on improving quality of care and developing multidisciplinary clinical practices. Topics include setting up control programmes in pathology laboratories, increasing access to radiotherapy services and implementing guidelines for the management of invasive cervical or breast cancer.
“Since its inception, C/Can has supported cities as they assess their needs and develop City Activity Plans for improving quality cancer care,” says Dr Sue Henshall, CEO of C/Can, continuing: “Now, through this innovative programme, we will connect all C/Can cities so that solutions to common and persistent gaps in cancer care are shared and best practices are amplified. By mobilising a global network of healthcare professionals, C/Can is supporting cities in their efforts to learn, adapt and scale quickly to strengthen the quality of cancer care.”
TeleECHO™ sessions will include a didactic presentation from an international expert in the cancer field and a case study from one of the C/Can cities. The focus will be to exchange best practices across relevant stakeholders and foster a productive, peer-to-peer discussion, so that cities can come away with greater insights to more effectively implement their cancer care projects.
Building on the demand for digital interactive learning opportunities among healthcare professionals, C/Can will learn from this pilot programme and continue investing in remote expert knowledge and policy planning advice for C/Can cities in 2021 and beyond, looking to expand the number of topics, sessions and cities.
Learn more about C/Can’s teleECHO™ sessions here.
