Our vision
Our mission
Our goals
1. Establish effective, broad-based, collaborative, and sustainable suicide prevention partnerships.
2. Build and sustain suicide prevention infrastructure at the local level.
3. Support upstream comprehensive community-based suicide prevention.
4. Integrate suicide prevention into the culture of the workplace and community settings.
5. Implement research-informed suicide prevention communication activities in diverse populations using best practices from communication science.
6. Conduct postvention and support people with lived experience.
7. Reduce access to lethal means among people at risk for suicide.
*Our community strategy is aligned with the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.
Our history
Our efforts were begun in 2006 after a cluster of youth suicide deaths. We learned quickly that many individuals and families have been affected by suicide loss in our community. Our aim was to raise awareness, provide education and prevent suicide. This message resonated with our community. To develop our branding, art students at local high schools were engaged. One of the students who died had been a runner and it was his teammate who created the running man logo that you see on our t-shirts. He encourages us to keep running and don’t drop the baton.
We began our efforts with classroom education, mental health screening, community speakers, the Sources of Strength program, and our Walk a Mile in My Shoes Suicide Prevention Awareness Event. Over the years, much community education has been added, including ASIST and SafeTALK training. Our walk continues to draw over 1,500 participants and 50 volunteers each year and is held each spring on the first Saturday in May at Eldridge Park.
