Our History

Yeah... we have been around for a while, gaining a lot of experience dealing with the public health monsters on local, state, and federal levels. Here are some of the highlights!

2008- Ben Gleason and Marcus Bouligny found the Prospectus Group with a vision to empower communities with current and relevant information, tools, and research. Together, they bring 15 years of experience, expertise, and commitment to public health.

2008 - Progroup teams with Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (CAPT) to provide training to states and communities. Progroup teams become master trainers for the national curriculum Substance Abuse Prevention Skills Training (SAPST).

2008 - First version of Ecco was developed with one function: Track and provide notes on Technical Assistance events.

2009 - Ecco Version 2 launches with advanced features, most notably, external user sign on and notes.

2010 - Ecco Version 3 launches with the ability to capture public health implementation plans from contracted prevention providers in the field

2010 - 2014 - Ecco Version 4 goes through a multitude of looks and feature updates focused on making a better user experience.

2016 - Ben Gleason completes PhD program and Prospectus re-organizes, officially opening its research division. Ben Gleason leads a team that puts together tools that help public health practitioners become more effective.

2015 - 2016 - Prospectus looks into gaining a better understanding about why prevention providers struggle entering process data on prevention programs. Prospectus conducts focus groups and interviews with prevention providers. The inquiry yields important, valuable information about the challenges to gathering process data. Some takeaways: Data entry systems often ask redundant questions and don’t offer the ability to pull report data in a flexible and useful way.

2016 - 2017 - Using information gathered from the focus groups and key informant interviews Prospectus expands Ecco to include the gathering and reporting of process level data, providing one touch and custom reporting options for clients as well as a streamlined process for entering data at the provider level. Launching Ecco as an Electronic Records System (ERS).

2018 - Progroup expands Ecco once again to help contract administration for Title 4e Programs for the state of Georgia, through Georgia State University.