Expanding access to cancer care in Asia

Across Asia, many people — especially in low- and middle-income countries — have difficulty accessing the health care services they need to manage their chronic or complex conditions, including cancer. This challenge is often due to fragmented or insufficient health care infrastructure and lack of specialty care expertise among frontline health workers. These health workers require ongoing training and skills-building to offer consistent and high-quality care for patients with complex diseases. To help address these challenges, the Merck Foundation (Foundation) has committed $11 million over six years (2023-2028) to University of New Mexico Health (UNM Health) to support Project ECHO®, a global movement to democratize knowledge and expand access to best-practice care. With the Foundation’s investment, Project ECHO aims to bring high-quality care to an estimated 11 million people living with cancer in underserved communities throughout India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Project ECHO

The Project ECHO team uses a tele-mentoring approach to train health workers in resource-limited settings to serve people with complex medical needs, and as part of this current initiative, will train and mentor more than 33,000 local health workers in Asia. To ensure their work can be sustained after the grant ends, the Project ECHO team works with local partners, government representatives, professional organizations and community stakeholders to strengthen local health systems and expand access across the cancer care continuum, from patient navigation to survivorship and palliative care.

This new Project ECHO initiative builds on the Foundation’s earlier support in 2017, when we awarded a $7 million, five-year grant to UNM Health to improve access to preventive and specialty care for people living in underserved or remote areas in India and Vietnam.