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| 2007 | ||
| Providing for Medically Underserved New Mexicans - 2007 |
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Providing for Medically Underserved New MexicansBy James Besante |
2007 Article Links Benefits of ASM Membership | |
According to the New Mexico Health Resources and Services Administration, 32 of the 33 counties in New Mexico are listed as medically underserved areas. The state faces a serious healthcare dilemma because, many residents, especially those in rural settings, lack access to comprehensive, quality healthcare. This lack of healthcare access has made the treatment of many chronic diseases such as Hepatitis C (HCV) difficult for rural healthcare providers in the state. The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC), developed a program to address this pressing public health issue. The program, Project ECHO (Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), has treated New Mexicans infected with HCV since June of 2003. The goal of Project ECHO is to offer rural and non-urban healthcare providers expertise in treating patients infected with HCV. HCV was chosen as the model for this new approach to disease management for several reasons. First, HCV currently infects some 32,000 New Mexicans and leads the country in deaths from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. Second, HCV management is complex and Project ECHO has proven to be an effective treatment program. Lastly, New Mexico is part of a global HCV pandemic which has infected about 200 million people worldwide. Project ECHO delivers specialized disease management knowledge to rural clinicians via telehealth. Telehealth transfers health related services and information between healthcare providers via telecommunications. |
By using the latest technology in telecommunications, Project ECHO educates healthcare providers in HCV management through audio and video teleconferencing, internet-based assessment tools, and telephone, e-mail, and fax communications. This new public health program has bypassed New Mexico’s biggest problem with the healthcare system: that a vast majority of New Mexico’s healthcare providers and facilities are concentrated in a few densely populated urban areas. This leaves much of the state without access to specialists and the specialized facilities needed to manage chronic illnesses like HCV. Since its inception in the summer of 2003, this program has helped over 1,200 patients infected with HCV. Along with comprehensive healthcare, patients enrolled in Project ECHO receive free state-of-the-art pharmaceuticals for treating HCV. The success of Project ECHO in addressing HCV has led to the recent development of similar programs for people with substance abuse disorders, gestational diabetes, and people co-infected with both HIV and HCV. This innovative healthcare program has proven to be very effective in addressing the unique healthcare challenges of New Mexicans infected with HCV. Similar programs show a lot of potential at managing other chronic, common and complex illnesses. Project ECHO proves to be effective in treating HCV in medically underserved, rural populations and serves as a model for other communities with similar problems. James Besante is a freshman at the University of New Mexico who is pre-med majoring in Sociology. |
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Rio Grande Branch of the American Society for Microbiology |