Our Strategy
The Action Alliance Strategic Plan, launched in 2024, outlines focus areas and functions for the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), with the goal of advancing high-priority objectives of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (National Strategy). These have the commitment and buy-in from Executive Committee partners and their organizations to advance in a meaningful way.
The Strategic Plan sets forth five Strategic Priorities that member organizations will commit to do and advance together. It provides the opportunity to activate high-priority areas of the 2024 National Strategy that leverage Executive Committee members’ personal, professional, and organizational and sector strengths.
These five Strategic Priorities will direct our focus from 2024 to 2027:
- Progress and Accountability: Develop and launch a framework for tracking progress on National Strategy and Action Alliance accountability measures
- Data Surveillance, Analytics, and Research: Promote improvements in surveillance and research, and ensure future Action Alliance initiatives are grounded in science
- Crisis Care Continuum: Bolster momentum for improvements in response to behavioral health crises in and beyond the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline system
- Improving Effective Suicide Prevention in Healthcare: Advance focused, effective solutions that scale within and across health systems
- Messaging and Communications: Develop, disseminate, and align the field around research-informed messages to spur change
The following Central Principles are foundational to the Action Alliance’s impactful work and will be applied throughout implementation of the Strategic Plan.
Strengthening accountability: A thorough and constant examination of the impact of Action Alliance initiatives is essential for quality improvement, course correction, and efficient use of partners’ resources and time.
Aligning messaging: By sharing consistent messaging and framing, the partnership can amplify efforts in a uniform way to drive change more quickly. Messaging does matter. Certain types of public messaging about suicide can increase risk among vulnerable individuals. Conversely, communications can be a powerful tool to promote hope and resiliency, encourage help-seeking, publicize prevention successes, and encourage actions that help prevent suicide.
Convening collaborative partners: No one organization can address suicide in isolation. It is only through collaboration and the cross-pollination of expertise, ideas, and connections that sustainable and wide-reaching change can occur. Suicide is not solely a mental health concern, but a larger public health issue with many contributing factors. As such, suicide prevention requires a coordinated, comprehensive national response that engages every sector of society in doing its part to reduce suicide risk and strengthen protective factors—at the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels—that help keep us safe before, during, and after a crisis.
Exploring shared policy solutions: Similar to consistent messaging, when private sector partners join voices to rally around shared policy goals, the strength of the effort grows exponentially.
Standing for equity: Suicide impacts people of all ages, from all geographic regions of the country, and from all demographics. However, notable disparities exist in our country. For example, nationally, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color are less likely to have access to mental health services and to use mental health services, and more likely to receive low-quality mental health care. Economic and racial segregation impact access to education, employment, and health care, all of which are moderators for suicide risk. Notable disparities also exist for those living in rural communities, for those from the LGBTQIA+ community, and for older adults.
Centering equity is crucial to address disparities and reduce suicidal despair, attempts, and fatalities. Equity ensures that everyone has a fair opportunity and the resources they need, regardless of who they are or where they come from, to have the opportunity to thrive.
Tracking progress: With the release of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, the Action Alliance has the opportunity to collaborate across sectors to create a sustained and coordinated national effort to track implementation progress, to identify challenges encountered, and to assess the impact of implementation efforts.
Previously, there were isolated efforts to track elements of the 2012 National Strategy. However, without a central coordinating presence to both advance the implementation of the strategy and to track its progress overall, the impact of the National Strategy was limited in its potential for reducing suicide in the United States.
A nationally coordinated effort to track implementation and impact of the 2024 National Strategy across public and private sectors will provide accountability, facilitate exploration of areas of potential improvement, and generate the ability to articulate its impact. This effort will increase accountability for progress and align implementation efforts around common definitions of success.