Overdose Fatality Investigation Techniques: Lessons Learned from Project ECHO

This webinar originally occurred on Thursday, October 7th, 2021
Duration: 1 hour

State and territorial public health agencies rely on timely and accurate overdose mortality data to drive effective prevention initiatives. As the number of overdose deaths in the United States has surged, the need for this data has only increased. Medicolegal death investigators play a critical role in investigating, certifying, and reporting overdose deaths, and ensuring that public health agencies have access to high quality and timely overdose mortality data.  

Though medicolegal death investigators are integral to overdose monitoring and surveillance efforts, access to training, peer engagement, and mentorship in this area varies widely across the country. In 2020, the Association of State and Territorial Health Agencies (ASTHO), with support from the CDC, launched the Project ECHO: Overdose Fatality Investigation Techniques (OD-FIT) to address this need. The pilot year of OD-FIT ran from January through July 2021 and offered free overdose-specific training to coroners and medical examiners through a virtual platform.  

This webinar provided an overview of the Project ECHO model, the content and structure of OD-FIT, lessons learned from the pilot year, and information about the  series which launched on October 26th.  

View Project ECHO OD-FIT Participation Video

Detailed Learning Objectives:
Upon completion, attendees will be able to:
1) Define the structure and goals of the Project ECHO model. 
2) Describe how and why the ECHO model is an effective learning tool for coroners, medical examiners, and other medicolegal death investigators. 
3) Describe the importance of death reporting for overdose prevention efforts. 

Presenters:
Richa Ranade, MPH | Director for Social and Behavioral Health at the Association of State and Territorial Health Agencies (ASTHO)

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