Warrior Built: Strengthening the Eco-System for Veteran Suicide Prevention

In July 2021, the CDC Foundation and CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control worked with DC Design, a social impact and design strategy firm, to host public, federal and private partners at the Warrior Built: Strengthening the Eco-System for Veteran Suicide Prevention convening. This was the first convening of its kind focusing on the collaborative impact with state health departments. The convening was designed to: 

• increase linkages between state/local public health partners, community-based veteran-serving organizations and private sector partners;
• to catalyze state and community action; and 
• to activate public-private partnerships that help fill gaps and create more opportunity around an upstream approach to veteran suicide prevention. 

As part of this initiative, the CDC Foundation utilized a human-centered design approach to identify partner needs and potential opportunities for collaboration to help advance the upstream approach to veteran suicide prevention. 

From the convening, persona profiles and stakeholder priority documents were created to highlight the gaps between partners and the individual needs of each group. These resources are provided for partners to share with other organizations working in the field.

The CDC Foundation continues to work on building resources and tools to share with the veteran and military community to enhance communication, increase partnership, and support partners as they work together to implement upstream veteran suicide prevention programming. This webpage will be updated as new resources are developed. 

Blog from November 2021: Building Better Relationships to Serve Veterans

Disparities in Suicide: 

• Veterans have an adjusted suicide rate that is 52.3% greater than the non-veteran US adult population. 
• People who have previously served in the military account for about 13.7% of suicides among adults in the United States. 
• In 2019, 1.6% of former active-duty service members aged 18-25 years reported making a suicide attempt during the previous 12 months. This was an increase from 0.9% in 2009.

This webpage is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $140,000 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.