Applying ECHO to developing a reproductive and sexual health education model in El Salvador
Abortion, Contraception
Awarded 2017
Interdisciplinary Innovation (Phase 1) Grants
Rameet Singh, MD, MPH
University of New Mexico
$25,000

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH), is an educational content domain at the intersection of health, illness, culture, ethics, and politics, and crucially important for patient care. It is widely recognized as affecting all aspects of health and well-being, and knowledge about it among providers, makes it a growing, but unmet, priority for the healthcare workforce. Medical, pharmacy, and nursing schools are recognizably deficient in SRH curricular content and measures of competence. A recurring theme in studies addressing the dearth of SRH content in health professional schools is the lack of educator comfort and knowledge with the topic. Medical Educator Academies have been successful as a model for training and education for healthcare providers by incentivizing improved teaching both generally and in specific domains. To address these needs, an interprofessional Academy of Sexual and Reproductive Health Educators will be formed at the University of New Mexico as an exploratory curriculum development/educational/research project. We propose to explore whether the Medical Educator Academy model can be successful in raising awareness and understanding of SRH, and improve SRH teaching and training for medical providers. Trainee members will be chosen through a competitive process, receive a participation stipend, be eligible for curricular development, and create individual Educational Portfolios of Activities (EPoAs). A validated model will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Academy; the evaluation of participant behavior change to assess the curriculum and training will use Kirpatrick’s model; and pre/post-participation surveys will be used in conjunction with the EPoA to evaluate curriculum and educational activity changes and trainee-member skill development.