National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention

Challenge

Each year in the United States, more than 49,000 Americans lose their lives to suicide, while millions more attempt or think about suicide. These lives represent mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, spouses, partners, friends, and colleagues from every walk of life—regardless of gender, age, race, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

Given the complexity of this issue, suicide prevention requires engagement and commitment from all sectors of society. Due to its expertise and thought leadership, EDC serves as the home for the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance)—the nation’s public-private partnership for suicide prevention. Alongside its more than 250 partners, the Action Alliance works to advance the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (National Strategy), which serves as the nation’s road map for reducing suicide rates and saving lives.

Key Activities

As the secretariat for the Action Alliance, EDC staff:

Support implementation of the National Strategy by championing suicide prevention as a national priority, generating opportunities to implement key goals and objectives, and cultivating the resources needed to sustain progress
Lead efforts with partners to advance five strategic priorities in our work to build, scale, and strengthen the national response to suicide: data surveillance, analytics, and research; progress and accountability; crisis care continuum; health care transformation; and messaging and communications
Cultivate new partnerships with senior executives from business, government, and the nonprofit sector to leverage their influence and resources to strengthen national suicide prevention efforts
Provide infrastructure support and coordination for all Action Alliance-led activities
Connect influential communications leads from national partners to develop coordinated and consistent messages about suicide prevention through the Messaging Work Group
Lead other initiatives activated by the Action Alliance, including Zero Suicide, Faith.Hope.Life., the Crisis Now model, and the Mental Health Storytelling Coalition.