In 2015, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were more than 44,000 suicide deaths in the United States. The annual suicide rate in the U.S. has continued to climb over the past sixteen years and suicide is one of the 10 leading causes of death. A significant proportion of U.S. suicide decedents have accessed health care within the year of their death, with estimates ranging from 30% to 80%, mirroring the broader population access to health care. Approximately one-quarter of suicide decedents had treatment for psychiatric issues prior to their death.
The primary goal of this program is to solicit applications that propose to directly inform understanding of mortality outcomes subsequent to healthcare visits. To accomplish this goal, this program seeks to support efforts that link data from healthcare systems to mortality data. While not an exhaustive list, applications that focus in the following areas would be considered of particular interest:
- Among the largest public data sources (e.g., Medicaid and Medicare/CMS; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality‘s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project [HCUP]), seek proximal as well as longer term precursors of mortality outcomes among various cohorts (e.g., defined by care access patterns; demographic characteristics)
- Examine mortality-linked CMS and HCUP data at both the state and national level to track state and federal quality improvement progress in reducing suicide burden
- Facilitate linkage of private/commercial insurance health care data with mortality outcomes to enable research on patterns and predictors of suicide and other mortality in this population
- Examine precursors and their association to suicide and other mortality outcomes to probe whether targeting particular precursors would reduce suicide as well as other types of mortality
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) is interested in applications that seek to better understand suicide risk and mortality in health disparity populations, including racial/ethnic minorities, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, and sexual and gender minorities. Topics of specific interest include the following:
- Suicide risk factors and mortality within specific health disparity populations (e.g., across Asian or Hispanic subgroups).
- Patterns of suicide risk and mortality related to the intersection of multiple health disparity populations (e.g., mortality in rural vs. urban African Americans, race/ethnicity and sexual/gender minority status).
- Protective factors related to lower suicide mortality in particular health disparity populations, including African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian Americans.
- Methods to generate more accurate estimates of probable suicide mortality for causes of death that are more prevalent in certain health disparity populations (e.g., firearm deaths, accidents, poisonings).
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) is particularly interested in applications that:
- Examine data from health care records that include mortality outcomes and information about use of complementary or integrative approaches, including stepped care and collaborative models, to better understand predictors of suicide and factors that may reduce its occurrence. Examples of complementary and integrative approaches include mindfulness based stress reduction, meditation, yoga, acupuncture, and integrative care.
- Examine linkage of data from clinical trials, including pragmatic clinical trials, that examine complementary or integrative approaches, to mortality outcomes to better understand predictors of suicide and factors that may reduce its occurrence. Examples of complementary and integrative approaches may include mindfulness based stress reduction, meditation, yoga, acupuncture, and integrative care.