Expanding veteran suicide prevention: The role of community engagement and partnership coordinators.

Abstract

Veteran suicide is a public health crisis. Suicide rates for U.S. veterans have remained disproportionately higher than their nonveteran counterparts during the last 2 decades (White House, 2023; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, Community-Based Interventions for Suicide Prevention, 2022). Additionally, the majority of veterans who die by suicide are not engaged in care from the Veterans Health Administration (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, 2023). Veterans Health Administration's Suicide Prevention 2.0 (SP 2.0) was developed to address this problem through a combination of clinical and community-based efforts that form a comprehensive public health approach for veteran SP (Carroll et al., 2020). In this article, the authors briefly outline the national, regional, and local program development of VA's Community-Based Interventions for SP within SP 2.0. Then, they describe local-level program development and implementation of the Community Engagement and Partnership Coordinators. Community Engagement and Partnership Coordinators are tasked with developing and facilitating coalitions with local agencies and organizations aimed at reducing suicide risk among service members, veterans, and their families. The authors review the implementation of this program from 2020 to 2024 and then suggest directions for future program evaluation and research on the impact of this approach in preventing veteran suicide. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).