Executive Summary
Teen suicide is a serious public health issue
Childhood suicide rose 57 percent from 2007 to 2018, and is the second leading cause of death in youth. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic there has also been a measured increase in risk factors that lead to mental health issues, but the full
effects are not yet known. What is known is that there’s no single fix for the epidemic of teen suicide, but parents and
caregivers are a crucial part of the solution.
Reducing access to lethal means is critical
Most families do not restrict access to medications in the home and seven percent of children in America live
in homes with guns that are loaded and unlocked. Many suicide attemps by teens happen impulsively, without
prior history of mental health issues. With often only a ten-minute window between the decision to end their
life and the attempt itself, reducing access to medications and firearms is “low hanging fruit” that is easy to
implement and has been proven to save lives.
The Prepped & Ready program
Children’s Mercy Hospital’s Prepped & Ready program is a research-based initiative working to reduce
the instances of childhood and teen suicides through lethal means restriction. For the past several years, Dr.
Shayla Sullivant and research assistant Alex Hartwig have developed the program and shown measurable
success in safe storage implementation by participants.
Despite success in achieving safe storage behavior change, two issues remain: 1) the ability to scale up
this successful program with limited team resources and 2) reaching a more diverse (race, gender, income,
education level and geography) audience of parents.
Our Process
We conducted primary research in the form of in-depth interviews and evaluated information-collected
by the Prepped & Ready team. Our secondary research explored relevant topics ranging from online
learning to community-based health programs. Additionally, we identified the Prepped & Ready program’s
internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats, otherwise known as a SWOT
analysis. This research and analysis informed our key findings around barriers of entry, scalability and
representation.
The Strategic Plan
Using our research based findings, we developed a set of strategies and tactics to effectively amplify and
diversify the Prepped and Ready program. Our recommendations look to improve efficiencies with the current
program offering, push it into new digital spaces, and open up new audience segments through new platforms and
partnerships. The overall goal: achieve larger scale reach of Prepped & Ready programs to parents and caregivers
of youth in Kansas and Missouri in order to further reduce youth suicide.
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