Expanding its reach

Project ECHO to serve as central office of the South Central AIDS Education and Training Center

The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center's Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) has been selected to serve as the central office of the South Central AIDS Education and Training Center (SCAETC).

SCAETC is a program supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration that builds clinician and care team capacity and expertise along the HIV care continuum. The training center collaborative is comprised of regional partners from Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. The central office at Project ECHO in Albuquerque, N.M., will be led by Michelle Iandiorio, MD, and Tracy Jungwirth, MA.

Launched in 2003 by UNM's Sanjeev Arora, MD - a social innovator and liver disease specialist - Project ECHO is a collaborative model of medical education and care management. It is dedicated to demonopolizing knowledge to get the best practice care to underserved people all over the world and has set a goal of helping one billion people by 2025.​

The ECHO model is not "traditional telemedicine," where the specialist assumes care of the patient, but instead aims to enhance the expertise of the clinician, who retains responsibility for managing his or her patient.