Launching early next year, the knowledge-sharing and -generating ECHO Autism Hub – established as a partnership between UP and the University of New Mexico – will be the first of its kind in Africa.

Through its Faculty of Humanities, the University of Pretoria (UP) and the ECHO Institute at the University of New Mexico recently signed a partnership agreement to establish the ECHO Autism South Africa advisory board and the first ECHO Autism Hub in Africa.

The hub will focus on professionals and families of children with autism, and is preparing to launch in January 2023 with a programme for interdisciplinary professionals and parents. The team consists of medical, educational, and therapeutic practitioners and parents. They have been meeting biweekly to develop their evidence-based content and to ensure its contextual and cultural relevance.

The partnership was forged between Prof Juan Bornman of UP’s Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) and Professor Trina D Spencer of the University of South Florida, who was a Fulbright scholar at the CAAC in July.

Project ECHO is a professional learning and virtual mentoring model that translates research into practice and builds capacity in under-resourced areas. In contrast to traditional training approaches, the ECHO model engages specialists and participants in an “all teach, all learn” interaction and in collaborative problem-solving, using case examples from participants’ practice contexts.

Drawing from the four principles of the University of New Mexico’s Project ECHO, UP’s hub will leverage technology to maximise scarce resources, democratise knowledge by sharing evidence-based practices, apply case-based learning to master complexity, and evaluate and monitor outcomes using a digital coordination and data management platform called iECHO.

Professors Bornman and Spencer hope to expand their partnership’s capacity and grow their national network to achieve their primary goals of “moving knowledge, not people” and to use the iECHO data to enhance data-based decisions that can unify autism services and support across South Africa.

To achieve these goals, they assembled key stakeholders to guide the roll-out via an advisory board, which has been meeting regularly since May 2022. To show their excitement and support, three ECHO Institute leaders travelled from the US to South Africa to attend the advisory board meeting recently held at the Future Africa Institute.

Photo caption:

Pictured from left to right: Jackie Jones and Carolina Romero (ECHO Institute); Joyce Macchambers and Kedibone Sekgethele (Autism Ekasi); Schean Babst (Baby Therapy Centre); UP’s Prof Juan Bornman; Prof Trina Spencer (University of South Florida); Michael Stanton (ECHO Institute); Nausheen Ameen (Gauteng Department of Education). Other attendees (not pictured) included Tumi Diale (University of Johannesburg), Zain Bulbulia (Gauteng Office of the Premier), Christine Koudstaal (retired principal, Unica School), Cobie Lombaard (private consultant for Autism South Africa) and Naomi Mampana (Autism Ekasi).