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AFSP partners with Action Alliance to reduce annual suicide rates
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention recently partnered with the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention to advance the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention by reducing the annual suicide rate by 20% by 2025.
“To combat this preventable issue and reduce morbidity and mortality in this country requires multi-sector coordination, alignment and engagement,” Robert W. Turner, private sector chair of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, said in a press release. “The Action Alliance — with more than 250 partner organizations involved, including AFSP — is uniquely positioned, given its various cross-sector representation, to progress and elevate this unified goal.”
Project 2025 will utilize dynamic modeling techniques, such as the Action Alliance’s Zero Suicide model, to address four critical evidence-based areas of suicide risk reduction.
“Studies have shown that health care systems can play an important role in preventing suicide deaths,” Jerry Reed, PhD, executive committee member of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, said in the release. “Hundreds of health and behavioral health care systems are already implementing Zero Suicide, and early results indicate this model has potential to significantly reduce suicide deaths of patients under care.”
The Action Alliance plans to increase implementation of the Zero Suicide Model, a quality improvement strategy to improve suicide care in health and behavioral systems, to better identify at-risk individuals in large health care systems.
“We are excited that the Action Alliance is joining forces with AFSP in support of the 20% by 2025 goal. By collaborating with partners across public and private sectors on actionable strategies, like the Action Alliance’s Zero Suicide model and our Project 2025 initiative, we are confident we will reduce suicide rates in the U.S.,” Robert Gebbia, MA, CEO of AFSP, said in the release. “We know we can’t do this alone. In making this a national goal, and by continuing our efforts to form strategic partnerships, we believe we can save tens of thousands of lives.”