The Center for Accelerating Practices to End Suicide through Technology Translation (CAPES)

CAPES OVERALL: PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Significance: Recently, we have seen massive growth in availability of empirically supported technologies enabling suicide risk identification, monitoring, and prevention in healthcare settings. However, our knowledge of effective, efficient strategies to translate these technologies into clinical practice is weak. As a result, these technologies are not being optimally deployed to prevent suicides. The Center for Accelerating Practices to End Suicide through Technology Translation ( CAPES ) will bridge this research-to-practice gap. Investigators: CAPES transdisciplinary Faculty, Advisors, and Consultants have extensive expertise in the disciplines required to successfully support the CAPES mission and its individual projects, producing synergistic insights and discovery. Combined, the team has over 1,000 high-impact publications in fields relevant to or directly studying the intersection of suicide prevention, implementation science, digital health technology development and translation to practice, health disparities, study design and analysis, and healthcare systems- based change. This scientific depth will be accompanied by longitudinal engagement of diverse stakeholders. Innovation: CAPES will be the first NIMH center focused on accelerating evidence-based suicide care by leveraging technology solutions across multiple healthcare settings. Further, it will leverage innovations in implementation science, person-centered design, hybrid clinical trial design, technology-related economics evaluations, business development, and ethics to maximize scientific and public health impact. Approach: The CAPES Administrative Core will collaborate with the Methods Core to maximize the Center’s impact by creating synergy; prioritizing evidence-based, scalable technologies for study; creating relevance across multiple settings and diverse patient populations; leveraging the Zero Suicide framework to align with priorities of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and NIMH; and fostering business development and technology transfer to help ensure successful public dissemination, adoption, and sustainability. Environment: UMass and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have an established history of successfully carrying out collaborative studies and are perfectly situated to support this Center. Their networked capabilities, combined with other academic, health system, business, and community partners, provide layered, complementary resource access for clinical care improvement, technology development, technology transfer from research settings to clinical use, and widespread dissemination of CAPES resources. Impact: Led by accomplished investigators with access to powerful resources, CAPES will be ideally situated to answer the critical research questions posed in this proposal and reach many diverse settings and patient populations. CAPES innovative embrace of evidence-based suicide care technologies, combined with a strong focus on Zero Suicide alignment, implementation science advances, technology transfer, and multi-channel dissemination, position it for transformational impact on suicide prevention in healthcare settings.