New Mexico

Cross-Sector Coordination to Ensure Life (XSCEL) aims to decrease the rate of suicide attempts and completions among 10-24 year olds in New Mexico through a continuum of local and statewide strategies. These strategies will coordinate and align multiple intervention levels across sectors including schools, communities, and healthcare settings. This project is urgent because New Mexico’s suicide rate rose to 32.3 per 100,000 for 15-24 year olds in 2017 after already being about double the national rate for the past decade. Geographically-focused strategies will be implemented in five counties with higher rates of suicide and/or risk factors compared to the rest of the state. One focus county is urban and the rest are predominantly rural; three have a high percentage of American Indian/Alaska Native populations and four have a high concentration of military members. XSCEL’s partner organizations have experience reaching and serving Native and military populations with accessible and culturally-appropriate strategies. XSCEL’s primary goals and objectives are: Goal #1: Improve coordination and alignment of suicide prevention and treatment activities across sectors at the local and statewide levels. Objectives: Engagement of individuals with lived experience; alliance-building activities; statewide suicide prevention coalition; changes in systems, policies, and practices. Goal #2: Improve multi-level suicide prevention practices in schools. Objectives: Gatekeeper train-the-trainer; screening, referral, and follow-up by School-Based Health Centers and school nurses/counselors; school safety plans. Goal #3: Improve multi-level suicide prevention practices in communities. Objectives: Gatekeeper training with community members; media campaign; non-clinical support by Navigators for referral completion; non-clinical EBP training for suicide prevention. Goal #4: Improve multi-level suicide prevention practices in healthcare settings. Objectives: Postvention services; screening and referrals in emergency departments; clinical EBP training for suicide prevention. When all project strategies are being implemented, XSCEL will serve the following number of people annually: Gatekeeper training (560); school crisis prevention and intervention training (130); screening (10,100); referrals for those with suicide risk (2,550); Navigator services (250); behavioral health services (917). Some strategies will not be implemented all five years because they require development work, and some of the annual numbers will include some of same individuals in multiple years. Therefore, over the course of the project, we expect to serve: Gatekeeper training (2,800); school crisis prevention and intervention training (650); screening (22,000); referrals for those with suicide risk (6,000); Navigator services (1,000); behavioral health services (2,000). Thus, XSCEL will have a broad enough reach and intensity of services that we expect to positively impact rates of suicide attempts and completions in the focus communities and impact systems, policies, and practices for suicide prevention throughout the state.