The purpose of this Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award is to prepare Stephanie K. Doupnik, MD, MSHP for a career as an independent investigator focused on reducing youth suicide attempts and suicides. Dr. Doupnik?s immediate goals are to obtain the training, mentorship, and research experience necessary to successfully obtain extramural funding to support multicenter clinical effectiveness and dissemination studies in this area. To meet these goals, Dr. Doupnik and her mentors have developed a comprehensive career development and research plan. The plan?s 3 components include: (a) intensive mentorship from a team of mentors and advisors, (b) advanced training in health policy evaluation, qualitative and mixed methods research, and healthcare operations research methods, and (c) an innovative research plan designed to develop and test a toolkit of evidence- based practices to support suicide prevention for young people after medical hospitalization for suicide attempt. Although youth suicide attempts result in approximately 60,000 hospitalizations annually, most inpatient medical hospital units do not currently implement practices to ensure patients? safety and continuity of mental healthcare after hospital discharge. The research studies outlined in Dr. Doupnik?s K23 develop and pilot test a toolkit to guide implementation of effective suicide prevention practices for youth discharged from inpatient medical hospital units who are at risk of suicide.
Aim 1, which Dr. Doupnik has completed, used large dataset analyses to determine which hospital, outpatient, and community structures are associated with higher rates of youth attendance at mental health follow-up after suicide attempt hospitalization and to identify hospitals with higher performance on mental health follow-up.
Aim 2, also completed, relied on literature review and qualitative inquiry to develop a suicide prevention toolkit to disseminate effective suicide prevention practices. The proposed administrative supplement will support work on Aim 3, a pilot test of the youth suicide prevention toolkit developed in Aims 1 and 2.
The Aim 3 pilot test will provide data critical to preparing for a future multi-center cluster randomized controlled trial. The proposed research is closely aligned with the National Institute of Mental Health Strategic Priority 4.3 to develop ?service delivery models to improve dramatically the outcomes of mental health services received in diverse communities and populations.?
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among US youth, and nearly 60,000 youth are hospitalized in inpatient medical units for medical treatment or safety observation after a suicide attempt each year. The majority of these youth receive no specialty mental health treatment during the hospitalization, and rates of outpatient mental health follow up after suicide attempt are low. Thus, the proposed research is designed to identify best practices for promoting youth connection to ongoing mental health care and safety planning after medical hospital discharge, and to develop a toolkit to facilitate dissemination of these practices to medical hospitals with different configurations of resources.
