In 2017, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subject matter experts developed the Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policy, Program, and Practices. Since then, more research has emerged, and new needs have surfaced with COVID-19. Through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prevention Institute has partnered with RTI International and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) to update the technical package content and develop modules that provide a foundation for activities (especially virtual tools) during periods of infrastructure disruption.

These suicide prevention modules accompany the technical package update and offer communities and states guidance to assess their local contexts, populations most impacted by suicide, and promising strategies during periods of infrastructure disruption due to catastrophic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

We will focus on strategies that 1) have been adapted for a shelter-in-place/infrastructure disruption context, and 2) are responsive to populations most at risk and most impacted by the stress, anxiety, social isolation, loss and grief brought about and exacerbated by the pandemic.

At the same time, we are also rapidly disseminating suicide and ACEs prevention tools and strategies with a focus on communities most affected by COVID-19.

This project is supported by Cooperative Agreement No. 6 NU38OT000305-02-03 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Health and Human Services or the CDC