Lead: Identify Key Stakeholders

Engaging leadership in this work helps create shared expectations around goals and priorities. Leadership engagement also supports sustainability and ensuring systemic change around suicide prevention work. Zero Suicide emphasizes the importance of this work occurring both at a leadership level as well as on the individual level.

Lead Team

Establishing a dedicated lead team with diverse professional backgrounds is a critical step in developing and guiding a comprehensive suicide prevention strategy within a pediatric healthcare organization. This team should include representatives from clinical care, behavioral health, quality improvement, and administrative leadership to ensure a well-rounded and effective approach. The collective expertise can support identifying current gaps, aligning initiatives with organizational goals, and promoting sustainable change. To maximize impact, lead team members should be formally allocated protected time to focus on suicide prevention efforts, allowing them to engage in planning, training, data review, and implementation activities without competing clinical demands. A well-supported and empowered lead team serves as the foundation for meaningful progress and cultural transformation in suicide prevention.

Steering Committee

Identifying champions and stakeholders in this work from multiple settings can support strategic planning, identifying priorities, and engaging in this work. Steering Committee cadence can be set by the needs of your organization. Representation can include medical, psychiatric, clinical, and non-clinical staff. Additionally, reflecting on faculty vs non-faculty representatives if working in an academic setting. Within both the lead team and steering committee executive leadership experience can ensure suicide prevention is a priority.

Sustainability & Funding

Developing a plan for sustainability and identifying funding opportunities to continue Zero Suicide efforts is essential in leading these efforts. Strategies to promote sustainability will vary organization to organization, but initial steps can include developing committees and leadership structures, engaging in strategic planning and annual priority setting, and developing policies and procedures related to suicide prevention and care. Sustainability includes a focus on devoted time and effort for key staff to engage in suicide prevention practices, while supporting data collection and analysis to inform practice changes and improving outcomes. Your organization can reflect on how to fund initiatives, including incorporating funding as part of operational budgeting, engaging donors who want to support suicide prevention services, and pursuing community resources and grants to partner in advancing these efforts.

Strategic Planning

Once suicide prevention has been identified as a priority engaging in strategic planning can support with identifying priorities and allocating resources. It is important to assess the needs of your organization and the youth and families served as well as leveraging data to inform targeted interventions and monitor outcomes. Key aspects of strategic planning include training providers in early identification of suicidal ideation, implementing standardized screening tools during routine visits, and establishing clear referral pathways to mental health services. 

Zero Suicide Workforce Survey

This tool helps assess the current state of practice, identify gaps, and highlight opportunities for growth. Administering the survey early in your initiative can inform strategic planning by surfacing priorities and staff perspectives on confidence and concerns. Repeating the survey over time allows you to track progress and measure system-level changes.

Developing a dissemination plan is essential to gathering relevant data for your zero suicide efforts. Consider your target audience and what data you aim to collect. It’s often useful to segment results by role (clinical vs. non-clinical), setting (inpatient, outpatient, emergency), or specialty (behavioral health, subspecialty, primary care) to better understand the needs and strengths across your system.

Lived Experience

Elevating the voice and providing platforms for youth, families and staff with lived experience is central to the Zero Suicide Framework. These important perspectives provide examples of how individuals have interfaced with systems of care, experienced care in positive and potentially harmful ways, and informs design, implementation, workflows, language use and resource development that infuses this important perspective in suicide prevention service delivery. It is important to integrate lived experience in your leadership framework, working groups, steering committees and have opportunities to engage individuals with lived experience in developing and reviewing suicide prevention services