Miami Dade College

Miami Dade College’s Project ECHO (Engagement, Connection, Help-seeking, Outreach) will create an infrastructure that saturates Miami Dade College’s eight campuses with suicide prevention and mental health awareness. It will provide training, screening, and outreach to increase the help-seeking behavior of 165,000 students. As one of the largest and most diverse colleges in the nation, Miami Dade College, located in Miami-Dade County, Florida, has designed ECHO to strengthen the college-community help network infrastructure to one that is agile, capacity fluid, and sustainable; increase campus knowledge capital on suicide prevention; and reduce stigma surrounding suicide and help-seeking among a highly-diverse student population. To assess progress toward attainment of its goals, ECHO has the following objectives: 

• Objective 1 – Network and Infrastructure – By the end of the project period, a comprehensive help network will have been developed as indicated by execution of a minimum of three Memorandums of Understanding with appropriate community providers. 
• Objective 2 – Training – By the end of each project year, a minimum of 200 core college students, faculty, and staff will receive training on QPR. 
• Objective 3 – Screening and Assessment – By the end of the project period, a minimum of eight “I Screen, You Screen” screening events will occur (Yr. 1 = 2 campuses, Yr. 2 = 4 campuses, Yr. 3 = 2 campuses). 
• Objective 4 – Outreach – By the end of each project year, a minimum of 15,000 students will participate in one or more real talk outreach events.

Project ECHO objectives reflect an effort to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and behavioral health issues college-wide in a culturally competent manner and reaching special populations; and to promote help seeking among those at-risk, as well as increasing the knowledge base of the college community to facilitate awareness and early identification of mental and behavioral health issues. The project will directly serve approximately 16,000 students, faculty, and staff annually and nearly 48,000 over the three-year project period, with a potential college-wide impact to 165,000 students plus faculty and staff. All of the program’s activities have been formulated to meet the needs of the commuter college aspect of Miami Dade College and to provide flexibility in implementation across the institution’s eight campuses, which each have a uniquely diverse student population makeup.