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Idaho Health System Puts mHealth to the Test on Suicide Prevention

St Luke's Health System is using a $3 million PCORI grant to test whether a care plan that includes structured mHealth messages can help care providers reach and engage with people who have attempted suicide.

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By Eric Wicklund

- An Idaho health system is using a $3 million federal grant to test whether structured mHealth messages can help deter suicides.

The St. Luke’s Health System will use the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) grant to test the traditional care plan – safety planning with a primary care provider – against a care plan that includes follow-up connected health messages from a suicide prevention hotline specialist. Working with St. Luke’s on the project will be researchers from the Universities of Washington, Idaho and Pennsylvania, the Idaho Suicide Prevention Hotline, Empower Idaho and the Idaho Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health.

The study targets a state with one of the highest suicide rates in the country. According to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US for all ages, killing almost 45,000 people annually, with a suicide reported every 12 minutes. In addition, half of that number visited a healthcare provider within the month prior to committing suicide.

Telehealth and mHealth advocates have long pointed out that timely and personalized messages can help improve patient engagement and outcomes. The idea is to increase “touches” outside the clinic or doctor’s office, giving care providers more opportunity to affect behavioral change and suggest resources.

“Our goal is to determine which approach works best to reduce the risk of suicide, improve the patient’s quality of life and ensure they are getting appropriate mental health treatment,” the research team, led by Anna K. Radin, DrPH, MPH, said in the PCORI project summary. “We also want to see if the effect of these interventions is different for adolescents compared to adults.”

Researchers in the year-long program – called the SPARC Trial – will also meet regularly with a team comprised of people who’ve attempted suicide before or who were close to someone who died by suicide to talk about the trial and its anticipated effect on patient engagement.

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