Lisa Wexler and Roberta Moto present on Decolonizing Suicide Prevention at the Southern Chiefs' Organization Inc. Fist Nation Health Gathering on March 20, 2024.

In February 2022, PC CARES co-developers Lisa Wexler, Roberta Moto, and Tanya Kirk were invited to present on the history and research outcomes of the project to Native Connections grantees in the state. This is the ~1 hour talk they delivered.

Partnering with Rural and Remote Alaskan School Districts to Adapt the Promoting Community Conversations to End Suicide (PC CARES) Intervention in the “New Realities” of Post-Pandemic Research

Because suicide is deeply connected to local, historical, and relational contexts, effective suicide prevention strategies require adaptation to the unique needs of diverse communities while maintaining adequate fidelity of evidence-based practices. Promoting Community Conversations to End Suicide (PC CARES) builds the capacity of local people in close-knit rural Alaska Native communities to take preventative actions based on their own relationships, roles, and priorities. Pre-COVID, the intervention consisted of a series of learning circles delivered by local facilitators who attended a 40-hour, in-person training. Trained local facilitators subsequently host a series of learning circles in their home community focused on different aspects of suicide prevention across the prevention spectrum. These sessions share actionable and evidence-based practices with participants who then discuss how they relate to their personal or professional role and local, cultural, and institutional contexts. The last part of each learning circle involves planning for action with the goal of promoting self- determined, evidence-informed, community-based suicide prevention.

To accommodate travel and safety concerns arising from the pandemic, we adapted PC CARES to a virtual platform and targeted rural behavioral health workers and school districts because these personnel have access to internet through their institutional infrastructure: village clinics and schools. Teachers, administrators, school and mental health counselors participated in 7 learning circles that incorporate local research and cover “upstream” primary prevention, to secondary/indicated prevention, to responding as a school and community in the event a suicide occurs (“postvention”). Here we present on the process outcomes of the revised format and content, offering insights about virtual and in-person learning, participation and satisfaction over time in an online format, reported actions and areas for improvement. Lessons learned from this adaption process can be helpful to others working to navigate community-specific priorities, evidence-based approaches, school-based interventions, and cross-sector research relationships.

Lauren White, Lisa Wexler, Roberta Moto, Josie Garnie, Tanya Kirk, Diane McEachern, Tara Schmidt, Suzanne Rataj, Diane Schneeberger

The Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders and the Forum for Children’s Well-Being at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a three-part virtual public workshop on April 22, 2022, May 13, 2022, and June 10, 2022, to examine suicide risk and protective factors in Indigenous populations, discuss culturally appropriate and effective suicide prevention policies and programs, explore existing data systems and how data can be used for tracking suicide rates, and consider opportunities for action. On behalf of the Promoting Community Conversations about Research to End Suicide (PC CARES) project, Lauren White (University of Michigan, citizen of Choctaw Nation) delivered the following talk.

Find out more about the workshop: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26745/interactive/