Strengthening pathways to care for alaska's youth - the alaska department of health and social services, division of behavioral health (DBH) proposes the strengthening pathways to care for alaska's…

Strengthening pathways to care for alaska's youth - the alaska department of health and social services, division of behavioral health (DBH) proposes the strengthening pathways to care for alaska's youth project to enhance alaska's existing system of care through cross-collaboration with youth serving systems and with a focus upon developing necessary infrastructure to improve the identification of and intervention with alaska's youth at high risk of suicide. Through this grant award, DBH will work in partnership with the office of children's services, the department of education and early development, and the division of juvenile justice to provide resources, training, and technical assistance to enhance their capacity to identify and provide evidence-based interventions for youth at risk of suicide. A primary focus of the proposed project includes expanding the suicide continuum of care for alaska's youth by developing, extending, and enhancing suicide screening, risk assessment, safety planning, lethal means counseling, psychotherapeutic intervention, transition, and discharge planning services within primary care, outpatient behavioral healthcare, acute care settings and for youth accessing crisis line services. Additionally, due to the necessity for community action and participatory methodologies when intervening withing rural communities and especially with indigenous populations, alaska's approach to lethal means safety and developing community prevention and postvention infrastructure highlights local epistemologies, axiologies, and youth voice. Due to the prevalent and pervasive problem of youth suicide within alaska, this project maintains a statewide focus to ensure equitable and expansive reach with the proposed interventions. The prospective activities herein encapsulate four areas of focus: building community infrastructure, increasing the capacity of youth serving systems, creating a comprehensive system of suicide care within healthcare settings, and increasing crisis service access and use. The anticipated reach of this project is likewise separated into four distinct areas of focus to account for cross system use with estimated direct reach as follows: 10, 150 youth directly served through building community infrastructure activities, 11,000 youth through increasing the capacity of youth serving systems, 3,800 youth through creating a comprehensive system of suicide care within healthcare settings, 30,000 youth through increasing crisis service access and use. As youth served in one category, may also be served in another category, these numeric estimates are not UN-duplicated across categories. Proposed strategies include the following: developing and disseminating regionally based and tribally informed lethal means safety products piloting zero suicide in acute care, outpatient behavioral healthcare, and primary care developing telephonic caring contacts and transition services expanding access to suicide specific psychotherapy through training and consultation developing community prevention and postvention infrastructure in 20 alaska communities establishing training programs for child welfare staff and school clinical staff in suicide prevention and intervention change public discourse through multimedia campaigns including lethal means safety and targeted youth 988 messaging and a multitude of efforts to highlight and extend youth leadership, including summits, training, and youth led product development