Public Health in the Rockies 2026

Suicide continues to be a prominent public health concern in Colorado, even as the statewide age-adjusted suicide rate has stabilized in recent years. Because suicide is complex and isn’t caused by a single factor, suicide prevention requires multiple strategies and diverse, collaborative partnerships - which the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention calls community-based suicide prevention. Since 2019, the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention has led and funded the Colorado-National Collaborative (CNC) to implement local community-based suicide prevention strategies in 15 Colorado counties with high counts and/or rates of suicide fatalities. Using a collective impact model, local CNC backbone organizations coordinate local partnerships and activities to reduce suicide by implementing and evaluating efforts to increase connectedness, education and awareness, access to economic supports, access to safer suicide care, lethal means safety, and postvention support. This presentation shares the following findings to date from the CNC implementation: 1) What are the key activities needed to implement a community-based suicide prevention program? and 2) How can a community-based comprehensive suicide prevention program be evaluated and monitored using a collective impact model? Using data from the CNC’s ongoing evaluation efforts, the presenters will also share findings on how the CNC’s six pillar strategies might be expanded into similar community-based comprehensive suicide prevention models in new communities.




(30-minute session submitted for consideration, but addendum below addresses activity for 1-hour session. ) Presenters will lead an interactive session that guides attendees through a planning exercise to bring community-based suicide prevention efforts to their community. In doing so, this session will introduce how a collective-impact design can be used by local backbone organizations to effectively collaborate with community partner organizations to develop local suicide prevention strategies. This exercise will also show how a collective impact model informs data collection for program evaluation when resources are limited.