Deborah M. Stone
Dr. Deborah M. Stone, ScD, MSW, MPH, is a nationally recognized suicide prevention expert and suicidologist with 24 years of experience. She currently serves as special advisor to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Injury Prevention director, co-leading development of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Previously, Dr. Stone served for nearly four years as team lead and lead behavioral scientist for CDC’s first Suicide Prevention Team. In this role she helped create the flagship Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program, which now operates in 24 states and territories. Before this, she worked for nine years in suicide prevention with CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention.
Prior to joining the CDC, Dr. Stone worked in state level suicide prevention in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and served as the director of the National Center for Suicide Prevention Training, a partnership of the Education Development Center and the Harvard School of Public Health. She began her career as a social worker supporting people in hospice care and those living with HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Stone’s research portfolio includes over 65 scientific articles, book chapters, and agency reports focused on the latest trends in suicide and suicidal behavior at the national level, exploration of risk and protective factors among populations disproportionately affected by suicide, and a comprehensive public health approach to suicide prevention. Her publications include CDC’s seminal Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policy, Programs, and Practices, which outlines the best available evidence for preventing suicide (updated in 2022 by CDC’s Suicide Prevention Resource for Action). Her expertise extends to data and surveillance; program development, implementation, and evaluation; strategic planning; and communicating a comprehensive public health approach to suicide prevention to state and local partners, decision-makers, and the public.
Dr. Stone collaborates with a variety of federal and national groups, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Behavioral Health Coordinating Council’s Suicide Prevention and Crisis Care subcommittee; the Interdepartmental Policy Committee and Community Suicide Prevention Workgroup; the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Interagency Task Force on Veteran and Military Mental Health; and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Steering Committee, among others.
Dr. Stone received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a joint master’s degree in social work and public health from the University of Michigan. She received a doctoral degree in social and behavioral sciences from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, traveling, listening to audiobooks, following current events, and hiking.