Practical Strategies to Develop and Maintain Partnership-Focused Campus Suicide Prevention Programs

Body of Abstract: In 2006, our campus, with more than 60,000 students and 40,000 faculty and staff, received GLS funding to create a campus suicide prevention. When that funding was complete, the broad campus and community network that had been established allowed the comprehensive suicide prevention framework to continue uninterrupted. Our campus suicide prevention program is now in its 19th year and funded by multiple campus offices and community partners, including Student Life, the Graduate School, the Office of Military & Veterans Services, Employee Assistance, and the state suicide prevention office. Our office has two full-time staff, five doctoral student graduate associates, and multiple undergraduate staff. As of 2024, more than 250 campus offices, departments, and programs are partnered with the program. These partners donate staff and faculty time as well as resources and funding. Over 100 faculty, staff, and student volunteers are trained as suicide prevention gatekeeper trainers, and over the last 13 years, these trainers have provided training to more than 30,000 members of our campus community.

This comprehensive approach to campus suicide prevention ensures that suicide prevention has become a shared campus responsibility – which is more than just a slogan on our campus. This strategy helps us reach across a very large campus and become enmeshed into many different aspects of the university infrastructure. For example, because funding is a shared responsibility, no one office or resource is overburdened, lessening the probability that funding will be threatened in the future. Additionally, because the work is shared among so many different partners and volunteers, there is university-wide 'buy-in,' again, helping with sustainability. Finally, because the office was a stand-alone entity for the first18
years of its existence (rather than under the umbrella of either Student Life or an Academic Unit) the foundation was built for all departments and programs in the University to share ownership of this important work.

Over the 19 years that the program has existed, we have created a comprehensive model for campus suicide prevention that is firmly embedded in a public health approach (American Public Health Association, 2021). This model is grounded in suicide prevention research as well as national campus models and frameworks (e.g., JED, SPRC, SAMHSA), and our campus is a founding recipient of the JED campus seal. Importantly, research demonstrates that these frameworks improve the mental health of students (MacPhee et al., 2021). However, these national frameworks and models are more broadly focused on campus mental health and because suicide prevention is often embedded within college counseling centers, these frameworks often include suicide assessment, intervention, and postvention in addition to prevention. In general, there is less available information on creating a college comprehensive model specifically and exclusively for suicide prevention. This approach involves far more than offering gatekeeper training, which is the extent of suicide prevention efforts on most college campuses (Wolitzky-Taylor et al, 2020). It is for this reason that we have developed a comprehensive suicide prevention model for our campus and researched the component parts. The resulting model has 10 components: 7 core programs and services and 3 structural supports.

This presentation will discuss specific-strategies for campus-wide buy-in and the multiple approaches (e.g., advocacy, education, policy, infrastructure needs, marketing, and most importantly, partnerships) needed for a sustainable and comprehensive campus approach to suicide prevention that focuses on students, staff, and faculty. Each component of the program has data and research that has been conducted over the years to support its inclusion in our campus-wide approach, and this will be shared with participants.

Although many campuses have suicide prevention efforts, these are often situated within a particular office and are limited to gatekeeper trainings. This comprehensive approach is unique because it is sustained (19 years), is funded by multiple partners, and was created as a stand-alone office, which allowed it to be co-owned by multiple offices within the university. It is also supported by empirical evidence.

Due to the comprehensive nature of the program and the diversity of partners, there is a consistent and concerted effort to create a program that addresses the needs of the many different populations on our campus. We recognize that rates of completed suicides, suicide attempts, and many mental health diagnoses are higher among students who identify as BIPOC (Samek et al., 2024), as well as among members of underrepresented groups, including those who identify as members of sexual minority groups (Busby et al., 2020), international students (McKay et al., 2024), or other marginalized populations. Treatment rates are significantly lower among college students of color relative to white students (Horwitz et al., 2020). Our suicide prevention program intentionally includes voices from underrepresented groups in all suicide prevention efforts. The program also creates initiatives that specifically and intentionally reach out using a variety of evidence-based and research-supported approaches to increase help-seeking and access to mental health care among populations who have traditionally not been included in suicide prevention messaging and educational approaches.

For example, the program's gatekeeper training, REACH, has a ‘REACH Across Borders’ initiative, specifically designed to meet the needs of our International Students. There are also initiatives for other underserved populations (for example, a very large initiative with student
veterans, with LGBTQI?+ students, international students, and others). We collect data on all of these initiatives to make sure we are constantly adapting them to meet the needs of these populations.