AHA Showcases Successful Strategies to Prevent Suicide in the Health Care Workforce

AHA, in its continued efforts to support the wellness and mental health of the nation’s health care workforce, has released 18 new case studies from member hospitals and health systems that focus on the real-world implementation of tactics and strategies for preventing suicide among health care workers.

The strategies upon which this work is based can be found in the 2022 report Suicide Prevention: Evidence-Informed Interventions for the Health Care Workforce. Each hospital participant sought to address one of three key drivers of suicide in the health care workforce: job stressors, stigma or access to care. The tactics they deployed in their workplaces were done so over the course of six months. These hospitals and health systems met throughout with other participants to share strategies, challenges and successes in real time.

“The strategies and outcomes resulting from the last two years of this project have yielded solutions that our participants proved can successfully move off the page and into practice, and in a short time,” said Rebecca Chickey, AHA’s senior director of behavioral health. “The real-world results reaffirm the role that leadership can play as champions of proactive, evidence-informed approaches to reduce the impact of drivers and protect their workers from the conditions that may lead to suicidal ideation or action.”

Stories from the collaborative are available on the new Suicide Prevention in the Health Care Workforce Guide in Action webpage. In addition, the AHA has produced a document summarizing the data and outcomes that resulted from the collaborative

FURTHER QUESTIONS

If you have further questions, please contact AHA at 800-424-4301 or contact Rebecca Chickey at rchickey@aha.org.

Development of this product was supported by Cooperative Agreement CK20-2003, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC or the Department of Health and Human Services.