Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, resulting in one death every 11 minutes, or about 49,000 deaths annually. Over the next three years, HealthPartners Institute will work with partners across the country to implement and evaluate interventions to help improve and expand suicide prevention programming through three complementary projects, funded through philanthropic support.

The work is made possible by a $12 million grant from Four Pines Fund to Henry Ford Health, with $3.2 million supporting HealthPartners Institute. The projects will focus on expanding the Henry Ford Zero Suicide model for reducing patient suicide attempts, including tech-supported safety plans to augment care and rapid access to virtual bridge psychotherapy. Four Pines Fund is a philanthropic organization dedicated to expanding access to evidence-based suicide care.

HealthPartners Institute will collaborate with suicide prevention experts at Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, which has a long-standing reputation for designing and delivering effective suicide care. This grant will help expand Henry Ford Health’s world-renowned framework for reducing patient suicide attempts within health systems.

Improving access to intervention in clinical settings

When a patient is identified as being at risk of suicide, the patient will work with their clinician to create a safety plan outlining coping strategies and sources of support. Today, health systems lack a consistent approach to developing and documenting safety plans. During the first project, researchers will assess which types of safety plans are most effective at preventing suicide. In the second project, researchers will evaluate a mobile health approach to delivering and incorporating safety plans into the electronic health record.

The third project, led locally by Stephanie Hooker, PhD, senior research investigator at HealthPartners Institute, in partnership with Brian Ahmedani, PhD , overall program director from Henry Ford Health, focuses on rapid access to specialized suicide prevention psychotherapy. Patients identified as being at mild-to-moderate risk of suicide will be connected more quickly to care following screening, assessment and safety planning. Researchers will examine the impact of this psychotherapy on suicide attempts and assess best practices for implementing this approach across health systems nationwide.

“Suicide prevention starts with making sure patients feel supported, seen and connected to care when they need it most," said Rebecca Rossom, MD, site lead for HealthPartners Institute. “Our rigorous evaluation of these interventions will help build the evidence needed to ensure patients have access to more effective and lifesaving support.”

Complementary research looks at early detection of crisis events in youth with bipolar disorder

In a related study, HealthPartners researchers are also looking at ways to better predict and prevent severe mood episodes in people with bipolar disorder. Suicide is also a critical concern for this population, and the condition is a leading cause of global disability in young people. These risks are driven largely by severe mood episodes of depression and mania, which can increase the likelihood of suicide, disrupt daily functioning and lead to higher rates of hospitalization. Yet, tools to predict risk for severe mood events and help create personalized prevention strategies for people with bipolar disorder are limited.

To help address this gap, HealthPartners Institute was recently awarded a five-year, nearly $1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Department of Health and Human Services. The funding will be used to develop and validate machine learning models for predicting risk of severe mood crises for young people with bipolar disorder and design a user-centered clinical decision support tool for prevention and early intervention of severe mood events based on individual risk.

HealthPartners Institute researchers, led by principal investigator Kate Miley, PhD, CNP, will then evaluate the tool’s acceptability, usability and feasibility in real-world health care settings.

Together, these grants will support HealthPartners Institute in continuing to advance behavioral health research and improve care delivery and health outcomes for people living with mental health disorders.