FINS (Florida’s Implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention) Project

Project Overview

The FINS Project is a partnership between the state suicide prevention infrastructure, the Inter-Agency Dissemination and Collaboration Network (IDCN), which consists of the Florida Statewide Office of Suicide Prevention, the Universities of Central and South Florida, and AdventHealth. This project aims to adopt and integrate the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention to ensure health and behavioral health settings and adult serving systems are adequately prepared to identify, engage, and treat at-risk adults with culturally-competent, evidence-based/best-practice (EB/BP) suicide prevention, treatment, safety planning, and care coordination (CC) services.

The goals and measurable objectives of the FINS grant include:

Transforming health and behavioral health system infrastructure through the development of Zero Suicide (ZS) advisory committees, suicide prevention policies and procedures, and the integration of EB/BP measures and mechanisms to monitor suicide care

Enhancing the collaboration of local and state-level partnerships to promote ZS and National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) utilization

Developing workforce training capacity to utilize EB/BP suicide prevention strategies

Enhancing CC strategies to include the number of referrals and sustainable treatment, recovery and support linkages for at-risk adults

Improving the coordination, sharing, and tracking of suicide-related indicators (suicide ideation, attempts, deaths, service utilization) via regional and state-level data surveillance systems

Over three years, the project will prevent adult suicide morbidity and mortality rates by:

Assisting partnering systems to adopt EB/BP screening, suicide risk assessment, safety planning, and CC tools via ZS workshops

Conducting EB adult gatekeeper skills training to non-clinical staff

Training clinical and medical staff in EB/BP strategies to increase capacity to conduct suicide risk assessments, safety plans, and CC services

Providing EB clinical training to treat suicidal clients

Promoting the dissemination of suicide prevention materials, including NSPL materials

Providing long-term CC services to high-risk adults to ensure rapid follow-up, smooth care transitions, and sustained engagement in services

The FINS Project team and its partners implement suicide prevention programming across the state of Florida, focusing on Osceola and Orange counties.