Staff Member

Colleen Carr (she/her) serves as the director of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), the nation’s public-private partnership for suicide prevention. The Action Alliance, housed at EDC, is charged with coordinating a comprehensive national suicide prevention response in the U.S and works with more than 250 partner organizations to coordinate implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.  

As director, Carr is responsible for providing strategic direction to the Action Alliance’s distinguished leadership including its 40-member Executive Committee. She works with senior leaders representing various sectors including automobile, construction, defense, education, entertainment, faith, forestry, health care (including health systems and health plans), justice, law enforcement, mental health, military, news media, professional sports, railroad, technology, and veteran services.

In addition to her work with private sector leaders, Carr works with leaders from federal agencies with a role to play in national suicide prevention efforts (e.g., U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S Department of Veterans Affairs) to help coordinate and align efforts around advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Carr is responsible for cultivating new partnerships and commitments to support national suicide prevention efforts and for delivering senior leadership briefings to both public and private sector leaders.

Carr oversees the implementation of the Action Alliance’s priority initiatives including national efforts to transform health systems to reduce suicide, transform communities to strengthen community-based suicide prevention, and change the public conversation about suicide and suicide prevention. Her suicide prevention technical assistance expertise focuses on policy analysis and system-level change. In addition, Carr and her team provide technical assistance and subject matter expertise to the Action Alliance’s various task forces (e.g, Public Safety Task Force, Workplace Suicide Prevention Task Force, American Indian/Alaska Native Task Force, Military/Veterans Task Force) and advisory groups (e.g., Lethal Means Stakeholder Group).

Carr has more than 15 years of experience working in public health. She started her career serving in AmeriCorps *VISTA and has experience working in public policy (state and national level), clinical research, and state public health (with a focus on injury prevention, poison prevention, and suicide prevention). She has spent the last decade focused on suicide prevention, including seven years at the national level with the Action Alliance. Carr received her undergraduate degree in public policy analysis from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her master’s degree in public health from Boston University.