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Word from Our Directors
Welcome to the fifth quarterly newsletter from the NIMH-funded Center for Accelerating Practices to End Suicide (CAPES) at UMass Chan Medical School! We are thrilled to share news and announcements from August to October 2024. We’ve hosted our summer Methods and Admin Core Retreats, our annual Fall Summit, participated in the Out of Darkness Walk at Polar Park, continued hosting monthly Lived Experience Advisory Board meetings, made significant progress on all research projects, and welcomed our second round of pilot project applications. We’re looking forward to an exciting conference and suicide prevention training season this Fall and Winter.
Sincerely,
Ed Boudreaux, PhD and Catarina Kiefe, PhD, MD Directors, Center for Accelerating Practices to End Suicide
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The CAPES signature project, which is a hybrid effectiveness and real-world trial of JASPR Health within UMass Memorial emergency departments, reached 67 enrolled participants! Read more here.
The JASPR Study has also successfully expanded to a new recruitment location at UMass Memorial Health Alliance Hospital in Leominster. They have piloted 3 enrollments at this location, with successful deployment of JASPR within the clinical workflow. Congratulations to the JASPR team on achieving these milestones!
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For Suicide Prevention month, our team planted flags to represent lives lost to suicide and people affected by each suicide death in Massachusetts.
Click here to read more.
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We walked and raised funds for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of Darkness Walk on September 28th, 2024, at Polar Park in Worcester, MA! So many of our faculty, staff, family, and friends donated, walked in person with us, joined the team, or shared our team's page to help fundraising efforts. We met our goal of raising $2,500 to support suicide prevention research and community supports. Just as importantly, we came together as a Center to raise awareness and remind ourselves why we do this difficult work within our community here in Central MA.
Read more about local resources offered by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's Massachusetts chapter.
| The CAPES Lived Experience Advisory Board (CLEAB) is available to CAPES project teams for consultation. We have openings for presenters starting January 2025. The CLEAB includes five members who have lived experience with suicidal thoughts and/or behaviors. Lourah Kelly of UMass Chan Medical School and Rick Strait of Education Development Center serve as co-facilitators. We are recruiting 1-2 additional board members. Please contact Lourah.Kelly@umassmed.edu for the application or to schedule a consultation. | On September 1st, 2024, the CLEAB, along with Co-Facilitator Rick Strait, and Drs. Kelly and Boudreaux submitted a response to the NIMH Request for Information on Strategies to Advance the Relevance and Impact of Mental Health Services Research. The proposed ideas have the potential to influence NIMH funding priorities and announcements and to align with the needs of persons with lived experience. | CAPES and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Manning Business School co-sponsored the Friend or Foe: Transforming Social Media and Artificial Intelligence for a Healthy Future research symposium. Dr. Denise Dunlap, Lead of the CAPES Business Development and Dissemination Unit, and her doctoral student, Lani Faith Dacula, led the planning for this event. Congratulations to CAPES staff and investigators who presented at the event! Read more here. | |
Publications
Check out these three recently published papers by CAPES faculty!
Dimeff, L. A., et al. (2023). Using the Delphi Method for Determining Key Performance Elements for Delivery of Optimal Suicide-Specific Interventions in Emergency Departments in Archives of Suicide Research.
| Dimeff L.A., et al. (2024). A Suicide Prevention Digital Technology for Individuals Experiencing an Acute Suicide Crisis in Emergency Departments: Naturalistic Observational Study of Real-World Acceptability, Feasibility, and Safety in JMIR Formative Research. | Kelly, L.M., et al. (2024). Does Personalized Mean Popular? A Content Analysis of Suicide Prevention Smartphone Applications in Current Psychology. | |
Upcoming Conferences and Trainings
The Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) annual convention is coming up on November 14-17, 2024, in Philadelphia, PA! The Suicide and Self- Injury and Technology Special Interest Groups are a great resource for CAPES’ faculty. SIG showcases are on Friday November 15th. Drs. Katherine Dixon-Gordon, Tony Nunes, and Lourah Kelly are planning to attend in person.
| Save the date for the fourth annual Suicide Research Symposium, a free virtual conference, taking place on April 23-25, 2025. Present recent research findings, stay informed on developments in suicide research, advance inclusive and equitable practices in suicide research and prevention, and network, connect, and build a diverse community with other suicide researchers across disciplines. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, October 30, 2024, at 11:59 PM PDT. | On October 23rd, 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is hosting a full day in-person training "Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk" led by Drs. Rachel Davis-Martin and Lourah Kelly at the Courtyard Marriott in Marlborough, MA. There are multiple suicide risk assessment and intervention trainings this Fall. Sign up at the Department of Public Health Suicide Training Prevention website linked below! | | |
Faculty Spotlight — Stephenie Lemon
Congratulations to Dr. Stephenie Lemon, on your Endowed Chair appointment!
Stephenie C. Lemon, PhD is the Co-Lead of the Implementation Science Unit of CAPES, a Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Chief of the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine. She is the new holder of the Barbara Helen Smith Chair in Preventive and Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Lemon is a behavioral epidemiologist and applied public health researcher whose work promotes health equity using community-engaged approaches. As Co-Director of the Prevention Research Center and Director of Community Engagement for the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science, she leads a program of research that focuses on chronic disease prevention and control, bringing together policy, community and social factors to achieve behavioral change in populations.
Dr. Lemon serves as Co-Director of the UMass Worcester Prevention Research Center, Director of the Community Engagement Core of the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science and is Co-Principal Investigator of the CDC funded Physical Activity Policy Research and Evaluation Network. She is a dedicated mentor and educator: she serves as Co-Director of an NCI-funded post-doctoral training program and Co-Director of an NHLBI-funded institutional K12 program, both in implementation science.
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Thank you for taking the time to read through the fifth edition of the CAPES newsletter! Stay tuned as we share out Center-wide announcements and opportunities each month! | | | | |
