Summary of program:
We will be evaluating the Zero Suicide Initiative (ZSI) for the Gallup Indian Medical Center (GIMC). GIMC provides inpatient and outpatient healthcare services for a primarily Navajo population in an underserved area in Gallup, New Mexico. Despite the high rates of suicide and mental health disorders that affect this population, the GIMC behavioral health services department is currently not able to meet the timely needs of the community, mainly due to the severe lack of providers and overwhelming patient loads in its rural setting. For these reasons, a multi-disciplinary team applied and received a large grant for GIMC to implement the Zero Suicide Initiative (ZSI). ZSI is a model recently adopted by IHS (Indian Health
Medical and nursing staff, behavioral health and social service staff, counselors, and case managers, and new ZSI staff to be hired, will be implementers. The decision makers are the current ZSI core group and task force, the project director and coordinator, the behavioral health and social service supervisors, and the new ZSI staff to be hired. The NN governing body and police force, Gallup Office of the Medical Investigator, Gallup city officials and police force, community mental health services, GIMC traditional practitioners, suicide prevention programs, community groups, such as Gallup Detox, NCI, schools, injury prevention programs, alcohol task forces, and neighboring hospital are
An evaluation of the implementation of the Zero Suicide model at the Henry Ford Health System used specified fidelity outcome measures such as “% of eligible patients screened, % of patients with safety plan and % of staff screened” among many others (Ahmedani, 2017). A quantitative analysis of this implementation demonstrated an 80% reduction in suicide rate in their health care organization (Coffey, Coffey & Ahmedani, 2015). The organization ZEROSuicide in Health and Behavioral Health Care has also developed evaluation tools including the “Zero Suicide Data Elements Worksheet,” which helps evaluators quantify how many patients received specific types of care including screening, assessment, safety development plan and lethal means counseling (Education Development Center, 2015).
Dr. Delaney describes the recent evaluation of the Zero Suicide implementation process in the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program in two community mental health pilot sites using qualitative interviews to assess clinician experiences (Delaney, 2017). In this study, clinicians identified “lack of operationalization of systems changes that would support increased suicide-specific care (EHR, forms, policies)” among other challenges in