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SPRINT Impacts

Priorities | Planning Awards | Impacts | Promising Practices

May 18, 2026

The Suicide Prevention Research Impact Network CORE (SPRINT) is funded by the Office of Research and Development’s (ORD) Suicide Prevention Actively Managed Portfolio (SP-AMP). SPRINT consists of a national network of nearly 500 VHA researchers and operational partners who collaborate with VA’s Office of Suicide Prevention (OSP) to identify research priorities; facilitate development of innovative research proposals though planning awards and field-based meetings; disseminate information about active projects, evidence, and partner priorities; create new approaches to help investigators access and work with VA datasets, and foster professional development among suicide prevention researchers.

In addition to OSP, SPRINT partners include VA’s Office of Rural Health and the National Center for PTSD. SPRINT is led by Steven Dobscha, MD, and Brian Marx, PhD.

SPRINT’s mission is to serve as a national resource that accelerates VA suicide prevention research to improve care and prevent Veteran suicide.

SPRINT Priorities

In alignment with national VA objectives and in collaboration with OSP and SP-AMP, SPRINT has identified three main suicide prevention research priority areas:

  • Lethal Means Safety
    • Use innovative communication approaches to reduce access to lethal means (e.g., firearms) during periods of increased risk.
    • Understand and work within the context of Veterans’ firearm-owning culture.
    • Examine the effectiveness of training programs for clinicians, staff, Veterans, families, and other gatekeepers.
  • Community Engagement
    • Engage with Veterans, including those not connected to VA; those in rural areas; Veteran families, friends, and peers; and community partners, to enhance suicide prevention.
  • Precision Medicine
    • Develop customized suicide-prevention treatments that consider Veterans’ unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.
    • Examine the effectiveness of suicide prevention treatments and treatment moderators (e.g., age, sex, mental health history).
    • Use predictive analytics to estimate future outcomes based on historical data, machine learning algorithms, and statistical techniques.
    • Understand risk fluctuation over time and match treatments to level of risk.
    • Develop precision medicine models and tools that incorporate personal characteristics and/or social determinants of health.

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SPRINT Planning Awards

SPRINT’s planning awards accelerate the transition of innovative and promising research ideas into full-scale, federally funded research or operational projects designed to improve the delivery of suicide prevention services within and outside VA. In FY2026, projects that received SPRINT planning awards include:

  • Characterizing legal problems, social risk factors, and missed opportunities for referral among Veterans who die by suicide. This study is examining documented social risk factors and referrals to legal services in Veteran suicide decedents’ electronic health record data.
  • Enhancing protective factors among homeless-experienced Veterans at risk of suicide. This project is characterizing relationship stressors, social isolation, and preferences for an adaptation of an intervention focused on relationships and resilience.
  • Tailoring a Whole Health approach to build community among Veterans who experience psychosis. This project will pilot test an adaptation of an established peer-facilitated group intervention, Veteran Voices and Visions, for Veterans with psychosis and elevated suicide risk.
  • Performing light assessment and neurophysiological modeling (PLAN) for sleep. This project is preparing a mathematical model to explain individuals’ sleep-wake cycles for use in a novel sleep intervention that will be applied for Veterans at risk for suicide.

In partnership with ORD, SPRINT has also awarded two-year residencies that enable investigators to work directly with the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service—Longitudinal Study (STARRS-LS) to conduct suicide prevention research. Three projects recently received this funding:

  • Evaluating whether suicide attempts follow a progressive course (PI: Daniel Reis, PhD). This project aims to evaluate the length of time between successive suicide attempts and the differences in method lethality across successive suicide attempts.
  • Modeling suicide risk among transitioning military personnel (PI: Amar Mandavia, PhD). This project will identify complex temporal interactions among genetic, psychological, and contextual factors that contribute to suicide risk, and inform interventions and support services by identifying periods when suicide risk is heightened.
  • Characterizing chronic pain experiences to predict suicide outcomes in Veterans and service members (PI: Marcus Wild, PhD). This study will examine personalized pain profiles that incorporate biological, psychological, and social factors as predictors of suicide ideation and behaviors.

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Additional SPRINT Impacts

  • SPRINT is partnering with OSP, VA’s Program Evaluation and Resource Center, and the SP-AMP to establish a Suicide Prevention Learning Community focused on improving the use of suicide prevention data. Initial work has included surveying researchers to understand needs and barriers related to the use of VA datasets, and development of a SharePoint site to facilitate access to suicide-relevant data.
  • Additional SPRINT data curation work includes:
    • The Military Suicide Research Consortium dataset is housed on SPRINT’S website. It serves as an integrated source of data on risk and protective factors.
    • SPRINT helped develop the Suicide Prevention Trials Database (SPTD), which features data from published suicide prevention trials. The SPTD can be used to conduct systematic reviews, support development of clinical practice guidelines, and identify research gaps. It also serves as an information source for Veterans, policymakers, and Veterans’ families.
  • Established eight suicide prevention workgroups, each with a specific focus and partner representation: Community Engagement, Firearms/Lethal Means Safety, Precision Medicine, Early Career Initiative, Evidence, Human Subjects/Patient Safety, Measurement, and Portfolio & Translational Review. Impacts of the workgroups include:
    • The Precision Medicine workgroup generated multiple products, including a scoping review of the evidence on psychosocial interventions.
    • The Portfolio & Translational Review workgroup regularly updates SPRINT’s Active Projects Inventory (API), which provides information for rapid response queries and portfolio analysis and is used to track high-priority projects.
    • The Measurement workgroup developed a set of Core Common Data Elements (CCDE; e.g., Veteran demographics, suicidal ideation and behaviors) for suicide prevention projects. Use of the CCDEs will be required for projects funded by the SP-AMP that start on or after January 1, 2027.
  • Hosts Early Career Initiative meetings attended by subject matter experts (SMEs), potential mentors, and early career investigators to provide input on project ideas, grant applications, and career development.
  • Expanded efforts in community-engaged suicide prevention research by collaborating with the OSP-funded Center for Advancing Community-Engaged Research and Evaluation in Suicide Prevention.
  • Prepared responses for VA’s Assistant Under Secretary for Health for the Office of Discovery, Education, and Affiliate Networks (DEAN) on VA research evaluating the impact of antidepressants, psychotropics, and pain medications on suicide outcomes in the Veteran population and subpopulations.
  • Hosts a 15-member Veteran Engagement Council (VEC), which provides input to SPRINT leadership and investigators to help shape prevention programs and improve the relevance, acceptability, and feasibility of outreach, recruitment, and data collection.
  • Provides consultations to members of the SPRINT community to help researchers refine project ideas or methods, identify potential mentors or collaborators, or review manuscript drafts or other documents. Since SPRINT’s inception in 2019, its investigators have provided more than 100 of these consultations.
  • SPRINT investigators are leading multiplenew data science projects funded by OSP and are participating in the development of new training materials for clinicians.
  • SPRINT investigators are serving as SMEs for multiple operations efforts, including OSP’s lethal means safety “Safeguard” initiative, and a congressionally mandated evaluation of the Dole Act.
  • A SPRINT investigator co-developed and will co-lead a new project to help establish a Suicide Brain Bank.
  • Members of SPRINT regularly publish articles, including in 2025:
    • A qualitative assessment of suicide risk management in research settings, published in the Journal of Communication in Healthcare.
    • An article that summarizes VA and DoD’s updated recommendations for evaluating and managing military members and Veterans at risk for suicide, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

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Promising Practices

Projects supported by SPRINT have helped spread programs, datasets, evaluations, and web-based and mobile trainings that have impacted Veterans’ care, experience, and outcomes. Examples of these projects include:

  • Development of a mobile intervention to reduce suicidal cognitions in Veterans. Participants found the mobile intervention for suicide helpful and easy to use. They experienced large improvements in perceived self-efficacy to control suicidal thoughts, perceived burdensomeness, and unlovability. (Results not yet published.)
  • Assessment of a suicide prevention measurement tool for use in non-VHA primary care. This study found that a tool that was adapted to address gaps in suicide prevention training among primary care providers was feasible and acceptable. Published in Crisis.
  • Implementation of lethal means counseling
  • A study found that documented, self-reported Veteran access to firearms was lower than expected, suggesting that access was underreported or insufficiently documented. Published in JAMA Network Open.
  • A study found relatively high completion rates of VA’s Safety Planning Intervention (SPI), which clinicians can use to help Veterans manage suicidal crises. The study’s findings indicated widespread adoption of the intervention, particularly in mental health care settings. However, a separate study of lethal means counseling action plans documented as part of the SPI found that the action plans received low quality scores on average, indicating clinician awareness of firearm risks but less discussion about other lethal means. Both studies were published in Psychiatric Services.
  • Analysis of genetic mechanisms associated with suicidal behavior. A study has identified a potential genetic target that is linked with suicidal thoughts and actions. Additional funding has been awarded to repurpose existing FDA-approved drugs to reduce suicide risk among Veterans. (Results not yet published.)
  • The Coaching into Care-Suicide Prevention (CIC-SP) intervention. A study showed that the CIC-SP intervention, which was developed to help family members collaborate with Veterans at risk for suicide to reduce immediate access to lethal means, shows promise as an approach to reduce suicide among Veterans. Published in Cognitive and Behavioral Practice. (In press.)

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