IUPUI ECHO Center receives grant

INDIANAPOLIS (Inside INdiana Business) — Programs offered at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI’s ECHO Center will receive a boost from an Indiana State Department of Health grant. The three-year, $21 million Centers for Disease Control grant will help with efforts to find and prevent drug overdoses. 

Additional funding from the state will support the center’s Indiana Peer Education Program and the Indiana Communities Advancing Recovery Efforts (IN CAREs), which brings communities with high addiction rates and opioid overdoses together virtually to share solutions. The IN CAREs program began September 1 and runs through Aug. 21, 2022. The program connects experts in responding to the opioid epidemic with community response teams comprised of healthcare professionals, law enforcement, first responders and others. 

Funding will also benefit the INPEP ECHO, which is a program designed to use peer education to teach health education for those who are incarcerated. Workshops will be taught by peer educators who have graduated from the program, to discuss risks and behaviors specific to live in a correctional facility. Andre Janota, program coordinator at the ECHO Center says the program is successful. 

“Over 95 percent of people who are incarcerated will return home. INPEP ECHO is a train-the-trainer model that provides an extraordinary opportunity to improve not only the health of people who are incarcerated but also the health of their families and communities.”