# ECHO-F Model to Expand Medication Assisted Treatment in Rural Primary Care > **NIH AHRQ R18** · UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR · 2020 · $383,316 ## Abstract Project Summary Opioids, primarily prescription pain relievers and heroin, are the main driver of overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 28,647 deaths in 2014 and opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 2000 (CDC, 2015). In New Mexico, rates of OUDs are among the highest in the nation-- 28 of its 33 counties rank above the national average in drug overdose death rates (NM DOH, 2016). The challenge of addressing OUDs in New Mexico is exacerbated by devastating primary care shortages and the rural composition of the population with an estimated 58% of NM’s primary care needs unmet (HRSA, 2016) and majority of NM counties (27/33) designated as micropolitan, rural or frontier (Ingram, 2013). Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) is an evidence-based and comprehensive approach to treating OUD using FDA approved medications combined with psychosocial and community based services/supports. Despite its potential, it is vastly underutilized in primary care. For rural areas, one of the main sources of health care is the primary care clinic. Efforts to expand MAT have encountered persistent challenges. The Extensions for Community Healthcare Outcomes ECHO© model provides a strong televideo-based strategy for improving practices in primary care. It combines didactic and problem-based learning and has been shown to be effective in improving treatment of Hepatitis C (Arora, 2011). The model has spread widely across a range of health outcomes including behavioral health but little is known about its effectiveness in these new arenas. In fact, a recent review of ECHO studies shows that very little has been published on the model’s efficacy or implementation outcomes (Zhou, 2016). Existing research that documents provider changes in knowledge, attitudes and self-efficacy indicates the model’s strong potential for improving practice in behavioral health (Katzman et al., 2016). Therefore, a study that implements this potentially strong model and includes a focus on implementation outcomes as well as feasibility for behavioral health is long overdue. The present study will implement the ECHO model with a minimum of 80 rural primary care providers across 80 clinics, and include additional clinic staff for comprehensive MAT team training. It will track implementation outcomes and feasibility measures with participating providers. In addition, this study will include added support, as identified/needed, for any provider that does not reach implementation benchmarks within expected timeframes. This combined approach is referred to as ECHO-F and reflects education models such as competency-based learning (US Department of Education, 2016) that provides individualized support, when needed, to help learners achieve desired learning/skills outcomes. Implementation benchmarks achieved via ECHO alone and those that require additional support will be carefully documented to understand the relative contribution of these components and describe possible areas for adaptation of... ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 9980345 - **Project number:** 5R18HS025345-04 - **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO HEALTH SCIS CTR - **Principal Investigator:** Julie G. Salvador - **Activity code:** R18 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** AHRQ - **Fiscal year:** 2020 - **Award amount:** $383,316 - **Award type:** 5 - **Project period:** 2017-08-01 → 2022-07-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9980345 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9980345, ECHO-F Model to Expand Medication Assisted Treatment in Rural Primary Care (5R18HS025345-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9980345. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*