September 2020
SPRC’s Recommendations for State Suicide Prevention Infrastructure (Infrastructure Recommendations) lays out six essential infrastructure elements for advancing state suicide prevention efforts. Read on to learn about the Examine essential element, including examples and tips for collecting data on underserved communities, related tools, and more!
Success Spotlight
California’s new suicide prevention state plan is a great example of formally addressing infrastructure development. This plan’s first strategic aim is to “establish suicide prevention infrastructure,” and the three goals of the aim are:
  1. Enhance visible leadership and networked partnerships 
  2. Increase development and coordination of suicide prevention resources 
  3. Advance data monitoring and evaluation
 
Read the full text of Strategic Aim 1 on pages 21–25 of California’s state plan.
Essential Elements in Action: Examine
During a recent interview with SPRC, Sarah Brummett shared how Colorado’s publicly available data dashboard has increased the state’s and local partners’ ability to acquire funding.
 
----"[Our visual data mapping tool] has been very helpful for our federal
----funders who want to be able to see, in a very visual way, what the issue
----looks like in a community....I think that’s been really helpful for us in
----terms of drawing down funding and being able to tell the story. We’ve
----also heard that it’s been really helpful for our local partners to…draw
----down foundation and private dollars [for] their suicide prevention
----efforts…because of that data."
Wondering how to “Ensure that high-risk and underserved populations are represented in data collection?” This recommendation provides suggestions for collecting data from high-risk and traditionally underrepresented populations. Ideas include working with stakeholders and partners to explore new data sources as well as employing data collection and analysis techniques like targeted recruitment and oversampling. 

The Data Supplement Recommendations includes further suggestions for data collection in underrepresented populations. For example, pages 14–15 list suggestions and resources for collecting and interpreting data from American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

You can also find out about Washington D.C.'s approach to learning about the needs of diverse populations. To support high-risk youth across public schools in the district, Washington D.C. conducted “climate surveys” with students, parents, and school personnel. The district then evaluated various student demographic groups’ experiences with the school environment.
Reminder: State Infrastructure Tools
Minnesota ensures it is reaching its highest-need communities through its suicide-related data plan, released by the Minnesota Department of Health in 2016. This plan has led to improvements in data collection, analysis, reporting, and use. Additionally, the plan called for the creation of two important data analysis groups that monitor the implementation of Minnesota’s suicide prevention plan. The state suicide prevention coordinator uses data analyses from these groups for reports to the legislature.

Data Infrastructure: Recommendations for State Suicide Prevention This document was created by SPRC’s State Suicide Prevention Infrastructure Recommendations Data Work Group to supplement the Examine section of the Infrastructure Recommendations. With recommendations for leadership, partnerships, and systems for data analysis and use, this supplement provides guidance for infrastructure that facilitates successful data-driven decision-making.
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The Suicide Prevention Resource Center at EDC is supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), under Grant No. 5U79SM062297. The views, opinions, and content expressed in this product do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of CMHS, SAMHSA, or HHS.