A New Partnership for Suicide Prevention

This Suicide Prevention Month, we have some good news to celebrate: the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) has been funded for another five years! We are delighted to announce a new partnership between the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), the University of Oklahoma Outreach Southwest Prevention Center (SWPC), and Education Development Center (EDC) to seamlessly continue SPRC’s current services, while also expanding SPRC’s support for suicide prevention efforts across the country.

Since 2002, EDC has been the home of the SPRC project, which is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), bringing the latest information, best practices, and resources to suicide prevention efforts around the country. During the next five years, OUHSC will lead SPRC, with SWPC and EDC as principal partners. We will also add new collaborators to build on the work to date.

Together, our new team will continue to provide you with the highest quality information, resources, and services, while also evolving to meet emerging suicide prevention needs and priorities over the next five years. We will keep bringing you the latest news, data, and tools to support your suicide prevention efforts, through our website, social media, and the Weekly Spark newsletter. And we will maintain and strengthen coordination with key partners and stakeholders across the country.

In addition to continuing our current initiatives, SPRC will bring new resources and areas of focus to the suicide prevention field in the years ahead. We will renew our focus on supports for those at higher risk for suicide, including indigenous populations and LGBTQ youth, as well as settings where prevention resources are currently limited. Our team will build a suite of new online trainings to support and improve suicide care in clinical settings. We will create a new Best Practices Registry (launching in 2022), updating SPRC’s current program listings with an evidence review system to enhance support of best practices.

Under the new grant, our team will actively engage the voice of lived experience in our efforts, and curate additional resources for individuals at risk and their families, especially those impacted by social, financial, health, or racial inequities.  And we will build and strengthen partnerships with other national resource centers that focus on behavioral health and other critical areas that relate to suicide prevention, including opioid overdose, substance misuse, adverse childhood experiences, and serious mental illness.

The new team leading SPRC brings extensive expertise in suicide prevention and critical related areas of work. Our combined experience, along with contributions from other partners, will help SPRC continue to provide you with the latest, research-based best practices to support your suicide prevention efforts, whatever your role, professional settings, or population of focus.

• OUHSC has extensive experience in mental health and trauma-informed care; children’s mental health and child welfare; and health equity, evidence-based practice, and policy and advocacy, including deep expertise in American Indian/Alaska Native youth and family wellness.
• SWPC has a long history of excellence in public health, high-impact technical assistance, data-driven strategic planning, and prevention science, as well as collaborative relationships with key stakeholders in the behavioral health field.
• EDC brings extensive national and international practice leadership in suicide prevention, capacity and infrastructure building, and systems change, and also leads the Zero Suicide Institute and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

We look forward to continuing to provide states, tribes and other communities, health systems, schools and colleges, other organizations, and individuals and their families with critical suicide prevention resources, tools, training, and information. Together with all of you who are doing this work every day, we hope to continue moving our field forward, addressing new challenges, building on what we know, and ultimately reducing suffering and saving lives.

Dolores Subia BigFoot, PhD

Presidential Professor

SPRC Co-director

Center on Child Abuse and Neglect

Indian Country Child Trauma Center

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Beverly W. Funderburk, PhD

Professor

SPRC Co-director

Center on Child Abuse and Neglect

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Marie Cox, MA, CPS

SPRC Project Development Director

University of Oklahoma Outreach, Southwest Prevention Center

Elly Stout, MS

SPRC Senior Content Director

Education Development Center