Suicide Prevention Research Impact NeTwork (SPRINT)

Steven Dobscha, MD

The overall goal of this CORE is to accelerate suicide prevention research that will lead to improvements in care, and that will ultimately result in reductions in suicide behaviors among Veterans. SPRINT’s Principal Investigators are: Steven Dobscha, MD, Director, HSR&D’s Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC); Mark Ilgen, PhD, Research Career Scientist, HSR&D’s Center for Clinical Management (CCMR); and Teresa Hudson, PhD, PharmD, Associate Director of HSR&D’s Center for Mental Healthcare & Outcomes Research (CeMHOR).

Goals/Themes

The overall goal of SPRINT is to accelerate suicide prevention research that will lead to improvements in care, and that will ultimately result in reductions in suicide behaviors among Veterans. The major domains of research to be supported by this CORE include:

Mark Ilgen, PhD

• Activating and educating communities to support Veterans’ engagement in their health and healthcare. This includes developing and testing systems approaches (including coordination of services – and activating families and communities) to facilitate help-seeking and engagement in care.
• Match services to Veterans’ needs. Includes developing and testing methods for matching level of risk to prevention approaches, as well as tailoring prevention approaches for at-risk Veterans (e.g., women, transitioning Veterans, Veterans prescribed long-term opioids, and homeless Veterans).


Teresa Hudson, PhD, PharmD

• Scale, implement, evaluate and sustain existing evidence-based and promising interventions, including improving the implementation of emerging and evidence-based interventions such as brief structured psychotherapy interventions.

Partnerships

In collaboration with HSR&D leadership, VA operations partners, other stakeholders, and suicide prevention (SP) researchers, SPRINT will identify and prioritize gaps in SP health services research and establish a focused SP health services research agenda for SPRINT members.

Results from HSR&D Needs Assessment

This fall, the SPRINT Core team solicited feedback from current and aspiring suicide prevention HSR&D researchers. The needs assessment included questions about areas of interest and expertise, and gathered input we hope will support communication, networking, and development of new collaborations. Here we provide a summary of the results from the needs assessment.

Summary of Suicide Prevention Data Review Meeting

On September 5, 2019, SPRINT convened a working meeting in Portland to synthesize an initial SPRINT research agenda and develop a set of initial project ideas to be supported by SPRINT via communications to stakeholders, pilot funding, and infrastructure. Attendees included the SPRINT Core investigator group and representatives from across ORD, DoD, NIH, the Military Suicide Research Consortium, and the VHA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. An Executive Summary of this meeting is provided here and a Compendium of Systematic Reviews of Suicide Prevention Topics prepared by VA's Evidence Synthesis Program in partnership with CIVIC for the meeting, located here. Topics identified from this meeting as a high priority for SPRINT to facilitate in FY2020 are located here.

For more information, or to join our listserv, email SuicidePreventionRes@va.gov.