Innovative Violence Prevention Education for Health Professionals: Project ECHO.

OBJECTIVE

In 2024 the Surgeon General declared firearm violence a public health crisis. Suicide by firearm continues to rise despite much public health outreach. Fortunately, health professionals are uniquely positioned to educate their patients on violence prevention and firearm safety.

METHODS

The Violence Prevention (VP) ECHO team developed a curriculum based on the most common etiologies: substance use, domestic and intimate partner violence, poor mental health, and social and environmental determinants of health. Thirty-six virtual sessions divided into 5 Series were developed between Fall 2023 and Fall 2025.

RESULTS

A total of 1172 unique participants attended 5664 times from 45 US states, and 27 other countries. Most were allied health professionals (34%) followed by social workers (24%), nurses/nurse practitioners (14%) and doctors (6%). A total of 2163 no-cost continuing medical education/education units (CME/CEU) were given.

SERIES 1: A retrospective pre-post survey evaluation showed significant improvement in all categories of knowledge and self-efficacy (p<.0001).

SERIES 2: A linked virtual poll (N=45) assessing knowledge (etiology of firearm deaths) and self-efficacy (communication skills with patients) demonstrated significant improvement (p<.0001) between sessions 1 and session 8.

SERIES 3: Survey results showed that participants significantly improved knowledge and self-efficacy 3-months post-series.

SERIES 1-5: The overall response rate for the post-evaluation surveys was 45% and 2163 CME/CEU were awarded. A total of 1,733 (68%) survey respondents reported that they will use what they learned in the sessions while 57% reported that there were no barriers to using what they had learned.

CONCLUSIONS

The VP ECHO program can successfully train hundreds of health professionals on firearm violence prevention by improving knowledge, self-efficacy and communication skills. The capacity-building potential of Project ECHO allows for more health professionals to gain the knowledge and skills needed to curb violence in our communities.