Thursday, March 13, 2025
3/13/2025
Together We Can Achieve More is our comprehensive suicide prevention strategy that aims to reduce suicide and increase help-seeking behaviors among college students, with a focus on graduate students and professional students who comprise approximately 8,000 of our 35,000-student body. We aim to decrease barriers to care by increasing awareness of our resources in the campus community, deepening our mental health infrastructure, increasing access to mental health, substance use, and basic needs (food and housing insecurity) services, and training faculty, staff, and students to identify and respond to signs of distress in students. The National College Health Assessment (NCHA) data from 2021 revealed that 25% of respondents-6% being graduate students--had a positive screen for suicide risk with 1.7% reporting theat they attempted sucide, which is an increase of 54% from the 2019 NCHA assessment. NCHA data from the last decade shows a 4% increase in the number of students who reported that they seriously considered suicided. Furthermore, 8% reported that they cut, burned, bruised, or otherwise intentionally caused themselves bodily harm. The Together We Can Achieve More project will address the following objectives: 1. Increased awareness of suicide prvention and substance abuse resources for campus populations at-risk for increased suicideal ideation or decreased help-seeking behavior. 2. Improve access to mental health and substance use services and improve healht literacy using a trauma-informed approach 3. Increase outreach and early intervention efforts to help leverage resources and increase help-seeking behaviors 4. Increase peer-led initiatives to reduce feelings of loneliness and improve ratings of belongingness 5. Increase knowledge about suicide risks and campus resources and referral skills among students, faculty, and staff. These objectives will be met by using the following strategies: hiring a Community Case Manager to help students connect with resources to help meet their needs as it relates to mental health concerns, substance use, and food/housing insecurity, increasing outreach opportunities and developing workshops and groups specifically for graduate and professional students' mental health needs, increasing the reach of our Mental Health Ambassadors-who are students that share personal mental health stories and promote students seeking mental health services, providing culturally relevant training and mental health resources through our partnership with Christie Campus Health who offers individual telemental health services with access to a diverse range of therapists. We are also developing programming to specifically address issues of belongingness and loneliness including developing a virtual reality and stress management initiative and Project Connect, a peer-facilitated program that helps students get to know students outside of their social group and build a stronger community on campus. We anticipate reaching at least 2,650 campus community members per year through training, educational programs, and increased service utilization. The Together We Can Achieve More project aims to increase access to mental health and substance use services, decrease barriers to care-particularly among target populations, and create a more nuanced and skillful campus safety net for our highest-risk populations, improving our overall campus mental health climate.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).