Evaluating Statewide Youth Suicide Prevention Strategies: A Research-Practice-Policy Partnership

Introduction: Youth suicide in Oregon is a serious public health issue, with rates that have exceeded the national average for the majority of the past decade. To address this concerning trend, Oregon passed legislation in 2012 mandating the establishment of the Youth Suicide Intervention and Prevention Plan (YSIPP) with the purpose of attenuating suicide risk for youth and young adults aged 10-24 years old. Prevention researchers from the University of Oregon are collaborating with the YSIPP guiding committee and multiple state and local agencies to develop and evaluate implementation activities, while employing implementation and improvement science frameworks to guide implementation and provide ongoing quality assurance and progress monitoring.

Methods: An initial needs-assessment identified four primary tasks for the evaluative team: (a) optimize the quality of implementation across multiple plan objectives; (b) identify evidence-based practices for implementation and scale-up; (c) monitor progress and sustainability of the various YSIPP initiatives; and (d) compile a statewide cross-agency database for risk monitoring and longitudinal tracking of suicide-related metrics. In order to complete each task, prevention researchers collaborated with state-level agency and community stakeholders to guide the stages of implementation and provide ongoing progress monitoring.

Results: A mapping of YSIPP objectives to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Preventing Suicide Technical Package of Policy, Programs, and Practices found comprehensive coverage by YSIPP objectives of the CDC specified approaches. One YSIPP initiative was a pilot study of the Connect Postvention training program across five counties in Oregon. Pre-test, post-test, and 4-month follow-up assessments found significant maintenance of knowledge gains, but lack of behavioral follow-through in postvention response planning.

Discussion: Results of the Connect pilot study indicate the need for developing technical assistance and support to enhance county-level implementation infrastructure prior to statewide rollout. Initial evaluation progress has demonstrated the effectiveness of research and practice partnerships between government agencies tasked with the implementation of statewide policies, and prevention researchers with implementation science and program evaluation expertise.