Avery Dakan Named Good Samaritan 2026 Caring Kind Award Recipient
CHI Health Good Samaritan recently honored Avery Dakan, MSW, as its 2026 Caring Kind Award honoree. Recipients of this prestigious award go above and beyond the call of duty displaying outstanding compassion, collaborative teamwork and an unwavering commitment to professional excellence. Dakan, a care coordination social worker, has dedicated her service to Good Samaritan and the region for more than three years.
Long-Awaited Vision Of Collaboration Is Realized
Years of dreaming, planning and anticipation culminated into jubilant celebration for the School of Health Sciences officials, students, alumni and friends on Sept. 8, when hundreds gathered at the southwest corner of the University of South Dakota campus to officially welcome students to South Dakota’s newest home for health careers education, a state-of-the-art Center for Health Education building.
ECHO Hub established by USD School of Health Sciences
Overcoming the obstacles of distance and locally unavailable expertise is the objective of the ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) project, a videoconferencing case-based learning platform that can feed a knowledge-sharing network. A more specific ECHO goal is to create and foster telementoring between front line caregivers in rural and underserved settings with experts and other health care professionals who are able to share necessary information to improve patient and public health outcomes.