Tilmon, Sandra J., Lee, Karen K., Gower, Patrick A., West, Kathryn S.H., Mittal, Kanika, Ogle, Marielle B., Rodriguez, Isa M., and Johnson, Daniel
To mitigate the lack of specialty healthcare, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Health Outcomes) trains community-based primary care clinicians to better prevent the progression of, manage, and treat common health conditions. ECHO-Chicago launched in 2010 as the first urban-centered ECHO program, focusing on safety-net clinicians, and has trained over 5,175 community clinicians across 34 topic areas. This paper examines self-efficacy among ECHO-Chicago participants across 11 clinical series, including a novel use of qualitative themes from self-efficacy questions. Five years of baseline and postseries survey data were collected from 2014 to 2019, resulting in 951 participants. Paired t -tests assessed change from baseline survey to postsurvey, and Cohen's d determined effect size. Change was assessed by individual series, adult or pediatric focus, participants' prescription privilege status, and across series by qualitative question theme. Metrics included total change, any improvement, a 10% target, and a clinical competency threshold. Analysis occurred from July 2020 to January 2022. All clinical series achieved statistically significant improvement in self-efficacy, and most had a large effect size. A total of 88% had any improvement, 65% met the 10% target of 0.7 points, and 52% met the competency threshold of 5.0 in the postsurvey. Prescribers had a significantly greater increase in their self-efficacy scores than nonprescribers. With a comparison across series, each theme achieved statistical significance, with most reaching large effect sizes. ECHO-Chicago successfully increased participants' self-efficacy. This inquiry adds an urban focus, years of data, multiple series, and a novel qualitative theme component to enable comparisons across rather than solely within the ECHO series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]