Project ECHO (registered trademark) Grant Program.

Existing law establishes within state government the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Existing law also establishes various public health programs, including grant programs, throughout the state for purposes of promoting maternal, child, and adolescent health. This bill would require the office, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to establish, develop, implement, and administer the Project ECHO (registered trademark) Grant Program. Under the grant program, the bill would require participating children's hospitals to establish yearlong pediatric behavioral health teleECHO (trademark) clinics for specified individuals, including primary care clinicians and educators, to help them develop expertise and tools to better serve the youth that they work with by addressing their mental health needs stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The bill would authorize an eligible children's hospital to partner with another eligible children's hospital, or with another general acute care hospital, to implement its project. The bill would require the office to ensure that the grant program includes a maximum of 8 grants that support pediatric behavioral health teleECHO (trademark) clinics to be administered and operated by an eligible children's hospital, and that grant funding be made available, at a minimum, to participants for specified purposes, such as recruiting efforts and funding salaries and fringe benefits for pediatric behavioral health teleECHO (trademark) clinic personnel. The bill would require a pediatric behavioral health teleECHO (trademark) clinic to target specified audiences, including school-based health care professionals who serve kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, inclusive, and would require a participant to perform prescribed duties, such as preparing a report that evaluates the grant program. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2027.