Project echo-age friendly community care: applying the echo? model with area agency on aging staff

Abstract The Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO®) model originated at the University of New Mexico to improve access to specialty care in underserved communities via telehealth and has spread worldwide. It has been utilized to improve geriatrics care with interprofessional participants but not specifically to train community case managers in Age-Friendly care and community initiatives. This is a program evaluation of an ECHO developed exclusively for Area Agency on Aging (AAA) case managers via a community-campus partnership. Twenty-eight AAA staff (including 15 case managers) participated in a 6-session series (March through April 2021) focused on the 4Ms of Age-Friendly care (What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility). Each one-hour session included a mini-didactic and at least one case presented by participants utilizing a novel age-friendly case form. Participants completed pre and post surveys to assess self-efficacy in applying Age-Friendly principles on 5-point scales. Surveys were anonymous and analyzed comparing pre-post using Mann-Whitney U tests. Of the 28 participants, 86% completed pre and 65% post-surveys. Self-efficacy for providing Age-Friendly care improved from 2.58 pre to 4.5 post (p<0.001) and for providing recommendations to colleagues on Age-Friendly care from 3.4 pre- to 4.5 post (p<0.001). Participants showed significantly increased self-efficacy (p<0.05) pre vs. post on 14/15 Age-Friendly care items. One hundred percent would recommend this ECHO program to a colleague. This pilot utilizing Project ECHO with AAA staff increased their self-efficacy for providing Age-Friendly care and suggests this may be an effective tool to bridge the Age-Friendly Health Systems and Age-Friendly Community initiatives.