Project ECHO Participant Spotlight: Benjamin Fogel
Project ECHO Spotlight interviews feature advocates, participants or team members discussing their experiences with ECHO. Read more ECHO Spotlights.
Benjamin Fogel, MD, MPH
Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)
Introduction
Dr. Fogel has participated in the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) series with Project ECHO at Penn State College of Medicine, which provides training to primary care providers and schools interested in preventing alcohol and opioid substance use in underserved adolescents. He joined the SBIRT ECHO Series, “as we were coming out of a very long period of this pandemic where all we focused on was COVID and operations, which was very important and all-consuming, and it seemed like a good time for me to jump in and increase my clinical skills in an area I felt a little weak in.”
Dr. Fogel grew up in Philadelphia and completed medical school and most of his training in Philadelphia and Boston. He is a physician and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine where he works in a large clinic serving close to 30,000 patients aged birth through 21, about one-third of whom are on medical assistance. Hear more about Dr. Fogel’s ECHO Experience.
Thoughts on Project ECHO
“The most valuable takeaways from the SBIRT ECHO series are the validated screening tools and practice, not just with my own cases but everyone’s cases, in how to begin the intervention with people who seem to have no interest.”
Dr. Fogel’s Advice for Future Participants
“I brought a case or two to the series and received great directed advice on how to handle my patients in the moment. [Presenting cases] is really not extra work; it’s like telling a colleague about a patient you saw that you want help with, which we do all the time. For the cases I presented, I did not prepare any more than I would have telling my colleague sitting next to me, ‘Hey I’ve got this patient with this issue, what would you do?’ And the ECHO team can help you format that into a couple of slides, you can send them a paragraph about your issue and they’ll make it look nice.”
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