Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a $955,405 Project Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242), awarded September 1, 2025, with completion targeted for July 31, 2030. This award funds the continuation and expansion of the INSPIRE (Innovations in Suicide Prevention Research) initiative, which operates a living suicide mortality surveillance system in North Carolina. The project establishes and maintains individual-level data linkages between state death records and large datasets from four key populations: publicly insured individuals (North Carolina Medicaid), privately insured populations, the UNC Health integrated health system, and releasees from the state Department of Adult Corrections, covering 10–22 years of historical data depending on the source.

The primary deliverables include annual updates to surveillance linkages, definition and monitoring of suicide mortality benchmarks across each population cohort, evaluation of policy impacts on suicide prevention outcomes, identification of risk factors for suicide mortality and related behaviors (attempts, self-harm, and suicidal ideation), and development of predictive models for short and long-term suicide risk assessment. This surveillance infrastructure addresses a critical gap by enabling health insurers, health systems, and correctional entities to monitor suicide mortality in their populations, establish performance benchmarks, and create evaluation frameworks for prevention initiatives—transforming previously missed opportunities for intervention among individuals with recent contact to healthcare or correctional systems.