photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Community Health Facility, 200 Maine St. is pictured Tuesday, February 25, 2025.

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health has launched a Suicide Fatality Review Board designed to strengthen community-wide understanding and prevention of suicide.

According to the board’s charter, the Suicide Fatality Review Board of Douglas County is “a multidisciplinary group of professionals and community members that meets to evaluate the circumstances leading to and surrounding suicides to improve the community responses and service systems in Douglas County.”

The board analyzes suicide deaths by examining both risk and protective factors, according to an LDCPH press release. Risk factors are conditions that elevate the likelihood of suicide — such as behavioral health issues, significant life stressors, access to lethal means, or other environmental influences. Protective factors, on the other hand, include supportive relationships, strong community connections, and other strengths that help reduce risk.

The board uses protective factors as a central focus to help identify opportunities to build resilience and guide prevention strategies.

Members of the board include front-line staff along with service providers from law enforcement, behavioral health agencies, health care organizations, crisis services and other community partners, the release said.

Families are asked to provide consent before a loved one’s case is reviewed, and all meetings are held in secure settings with strict confidentiality measures in place. Board members access case information through a secure portal prior to meetings. With consent from the families, members may share relevant details from their own organizations’ records if they previously interacted with the individual who died by suicide. This process helps the board develop a more complete understanding of each person’s experiences.

“They might be able to share just a few more details that no one else knows,” Kinard said in the release. “We get a more complete picture of who this person was, like their strengths, their supports, and what they struggled with. From that, we can distill the risk factors and protective factors.”

After going over a case, the board discusses prevention strategies. When there is enough evidence for a strategy to be implemented, it will be presented to a separate group, Suicide Fatality Review Board’s Policy Group. This group has leaders from the same sectors represented on the review board who have the authority to support the implementation of recommended strategies, the release said.

“As I watch the work of the suicide fatality review board, it shows me that there is a way to develop effective interventions, and it comes from sharing data with partner organizations,” Kinard said in the release. “Everyone knows a little bit about a lot of things, but it’s hard to see the full picture. When we come together, we stay focused on what really matters–people. We’re able to work together in ways we don’t usually get the opportunity to, and that makes us a stronger community.”

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The launch of the Suicide Fatality Review Board of Douglas County has been in the works since 2019, when Dee Kinard, informatics manager at LDCPH, first encountered an innovative strategy for preventing suicide while attending a conference. That year, Kinard had been preparing a suicide report for Douglas County and was exploring what public health could do to better address rising suicide rates.

Kinard met Kimberly Repp, chief epidemiologist for Washington County Public Health in Oregon, and learned about her county’s suicide fatality review board. Kinard brought the idea back home to introduce to Douglas County.

“As I put together the forms and thought through the process, I realized how many people I needed to engage,” Kinard said in the release. “It became clear that this was about building a shared understanding — what the process is, what it could be, and how we could make it work for Douglas County. It took time to identify the right people, talk with them, and get everyone to the point of saying, ‘Yes, this is worth the effort.'”

Creating the board was a joint effort between Will Hallagin, Douglas County’s coroner scene coordinator, and LDCPH. Hallagin said in the release that he began conducting death investigations when he served as a paramedic with Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical.

“Being part of this group is another opportunity to help the community as we face a suicide level that is alarmingly high and impacts people in such a devastating way,” Hallagin said in the release. “I am so appreciative to Dee for inviting our team to be part of this so we can work to reduce the impact suicide causes. Having seen firsthand how suicide affects families, any opportunity to prevent a death by suicide is a very worthy undertaking. I am hopeful that Douglas County will see results that are similar to those in other areas that have implemented (Suicide Fatality Review Boards).”