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Impact of a federally funded prevention program on youth suicide mortality by county
In 2004, the United States President and Congress passed the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act (GLSMA) to provide national support for state and tribal suicide prevention programs. This presentation will examine whether there was reduction in youth suicide mortality that can be reasonably attributed to GLS program efforts by looking at variation across counties and over time.
Methods
The sample included 479 counties with at least 3,000 youth aged 10-24 and at least one GLS training between 2006 and 2009 and 1,161 ‘control counties’ were selected using propensity score matching techniques. The main outcome of interest is the county’s suicide rate among youth aged 10-24 between 2007 and 2010. The main independent variable of interest is whether GLS funded trainings were implemented in the county during the previous year. A rich set of county characteristics, including historical mortality rates, were included as covariates.
Results
Counties implementing GLS trainings exhibited significantly lower suicide rates the year following the training implementation when compared with similar counties that did not implement GLS trainings (-1.33 deaths per 100,000 youths, p=.02). Simultaneously, there is no significant difference in terms of suicide mortality rates among adults (p=.30) or non-suicide mortality rates among population aged 10-18 or 19-24 (p=.37 and .72 ). These results are fairly similar when extreme weights are truncated.
Conclusions
These findings indicate that the significant investment SAMHSA and state and tribal communities across the nation are making in youth suicide prevention are having an impact on youth suicide mortality rates.
Learning Areas:
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practiceLearning Objectives:
Identify some of the preliminary findings from the implementation of Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention Program.
Keyword(s): Suicide, Youth
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: With over fifteen years of experience in the area of quantitative methods applied to public health policy evaluation, I provided methodological guidance and conducted statistical analysis for a range of evaluation studies, including major U.S. federal initiatives. I have been involved in the dissemination of findings through peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations, and have delivered short trainings on technical aspects of evaluation design and analysis to audiences with varied backgrounds.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.