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PERU Receives Funding for Work on Veteran Suicide Prevention

The University of Pittsburgh Program Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU), in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services and the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, recently announced a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to implement and evaluate a comprehensive public health approach to suicide prevention, focusing especially on service members, veterans and their families.

The CDC awarded PERU $700,000 in funding each year over the next five years for suicide prevention by creating the Northwest Pennsylvania Veteran Suicide Prevention Program.

The program will consist of an assessment of active county, state and national suicide prevention initiatives to identify gaps in services and programming. Following the assessment, PERU will develop and implement additional risk assessment programs, community-based trainings and healthcare-related initiatives across a 15-county target region. Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected throughout the program to identify best practices and develop future policy.