2) Understand a public health approach to suicide prevention program design and evaluation.
3) Describe the portfolio evaluation results.
In 2020, Congress directed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DoD) suicide prevention programs. The findings from the GAO report indicated that many individual suicide prevention efforts and programs have not been sufficiently evaluated (GAO Report, 2021). Evaluating DoD suicide prevention initiatives is necessary to determine which efforts are effective and worth investing in. In 2021, the University Service University (USU) Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS) was funded to develop educational, actionable tools to help the DoD and the Nation address the burden of suicide risk. Twelve projects were selected to develop suicide prevention educational products and tools for military and civilian communities. These products ranged from increasing knowledge and education on the safe storage of firearms to enhancing leaders’ and service members’ ability to encourage peers to seek mental health help when needed. CSTS scientists and program leads developed an evaluation framework incorporating core logic model concepts, including key principles, inputs, and proximal and distal outcomes. Program leads selected the evaluation type (formative, process, summative, etc.) and accompanying metrics that best fit the nature of their project. However, multiple distinct evaluations can complicate stakeholders’ and policymakers’ decision processes about what projects best meet the overall program goals and are worth continuous investment. Therefore, a suite evaluation of the Suicide Prevention Program as a whole was conducted with project leads collecting data based on their specified metrics. The evaluation focused on how the program met its original goals and not an evaluation of each individual project. This poster will describe the Suicide Prevention Program’s evaluation process and results, data collected from each project, and the overall strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation approach.