After hundreds of people gathered for a summit about suicide last year, San Juan Basin Public Health started organizing a communitywide effort to work at reducing the suicide rate.
Based on feedback from residents who attended the summit, health department staff decided to involve law enforcement, schools, youths, health care institutions, churches, nonprofits and other groups in suicide prevention efforts.
“Our takeaway was that one focused intervention to try to prevent suicide wasn’t going to really make a difference. That’s how we really landed on the model of collective impact,” said Laura Warner, director of health promotion services.
The model brings together different sectors of a community to solve a complex problem through a common agenda, she said.
“It’s considered to be a best practice in that nonprofit, social-change world, but the evidence base behind it is kind of fledgling,” she said.
The model can help sustain social-change movements by involving multiple organizations and spreading out the workload, said Mary Dengler-Frey, regional health connector for the Southwest Colorado Area Health Education Center.
“If we can each do one little part of the whole collectively, we can move the needle and we can really make an impact,” she said.
The La Plata and San Juan Counties Suicide Prevention Collaborative has drafted ambitious goals.
However, the collaborative is in its initial organizing phase, and it has not drafted an action plan that will lay out strategies to achieve all of its goals, said Claire Ninde, spokeswoman for the health department. The department is also seeking more data to inform its process, she said.
The collaborative’s current goals are:
Building awareness about suicide and mental health.Identifying a protocol of care that would be followed by all health care agencies when someone experiences a mental health crisis.Hiring a mental health advocate to improve the coordination of mental health agencies.Fostering meaningful connections between individuals.Providing free suicide intervention trainings, especially for youths and teens. Writing a plan for a community-wide response to suicide that would guide many groups, including law enforcement, media, faith-based, schools and mental health providers. The plan would outline how to support those bereaved by a suicide and prevent contagion.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
Building awareness about suicide and mental health.Identifying a protocol of care that would be followed by all health care agencies when someone experiences a mental health crisis.Hiring a mental health advocate to improve the coordination of mental health agencies.Fostering meaningful connections between individuals.Providing free suicide intervention trainings, especially for youths and teens. Writing a plan for a community-wide response to suicide that would guide many groups, including law enforcement, media, faith-based, schools and mental health providers. The plan would outline how to support those bereaved by a suicide and prevent contagion.
