Building Capacity to Prevent Veteran Suicide

Veterans are a population at higher risk of suicide and other socio-contextual issues post transition. In 2021, the unadjusted suicide rate was 33.9 for U.S. veterans and 16.7 for non-veteran U.S. adults, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. In the same year, the age- and sex-adjusted suicide rate for U.S. veterans was 71.8 percent greater than that of non-veteran adults. 

• Suicide is a leading cause of death for Americans overall and increased approximately 36 percent between 2000 and 2021.
• Suicide was responsible for more than 48,000 deaths in 2021.
• In fact, many people who die by suicide are not known to have a diagnosed mental health condition at the time of death.

Suicide is preventable.

Suicide is rarely caused by any single factor, which means there are multiple pathways for prevention. Other problems often contribute to suicide, such as those related to relationships, substance misuse, physical health, and job, money, legal or housing stress.

To help veteran-serving organizations (VSOs) better evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of their suicide prevention programs, the CDC Foundation was awarded a federal grant to work on the Veteran Suicide Prevention: Evaluation Demonstration (VSPE) Project in partnership with CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Through the VSPE project the CDC Foundation awards and administers short-term mini grants to VSOs that are implementing upstream suicide prevention programs focused on reducing risk factors and promoting protective factors. The funding supports VSO grantees in developing, implementing and strengthening program evaluation skills. In this program, VSOs build their evaluation capacity to identify relevant evaluation partners, describe their programs, develop evaluation questions, identify appropriate evaluation methods and implement their evaluation plans with technical assistance from the CDC Foundation and CDC.VSOs develop and implement formative or process evaluations to understand how their program is functioning and to improve its implementation and effectiveness.

VSPE Program Evaluation Toolkit

To make program evaluation tools and materials more accessible to a wider audience, CDC and the CDC Foundation collaborated with participating VSOs to develop the Veteran Suicide Prevention through Effective Evaluation Practice: Veteran Suicide Prevention Program Evaluation Toolkit (VSPE Toolkit). This toolkit is to be used to develop and implement evaluation plans for public health programs, particularly for upstream suicide prevention strategies. The VSPE Toolkit is based on the CDC Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health and provides VSOs with usable content on formative and process program evaluation of upstream veteran suicide prevention programs. The toolkit also has an accompanying document called the VSPE Workbook, which includes worksheets relevant to each toolkit section and two VSO case example evaluation projects. It is recommended to use the toolkit sequentially to work through each section and related worksheet, but any toolkit component can be used as needed.

View the Veteran Suicide Prevention Evaluation Program Toolkit

Program Impact

The VSPE project has awarded 23 veteran-serving organizations in the six years of the project which have contributed to advancing capacity of evaluation efforts, promoting evidence-based strategies for suicide prevention, and increasing communication to combat stigmatization of suicide. Read more in the CDC Foundation’s Impact Report Year 1-3.

CDC is working towards broader, community-level protection against suicide. By building the evidence base around what works within existing VSO prevention programs, this project aims ultimately to prevent and reduce veteran suicide by reaching those at risk before they are in crisis.

Brandon Healy of Operation Stand Down Tennessee explains how the VSPE program helped his organization strengthen the services they provide to veterans in the video below.

Lacy Gunnoe with Camp Southern Ground describes how they are serving veterans with support from the CDC Foundation through the VSPE program in the video below.
 

This program is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $2,500,000 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, CDC/HHS or the U.S. Government.