In 2010, Dr. Jerry Reed spearheaded the launch of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, a public-private partnership advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Prior to this groundbreaking effort, the work was at best a peripheral niche. At the September 10th kickoff event in Washington, DC, the keynote speakers were the Secretaries of Defense and Health and Human Services.
More than a dozen specialty task forces were launched by the Action Alliance, including the Clinical Care & Intervention Task Force that one year later published the Suicide Care in Systems Framework, the foundation for the Zero Suicide in Healthcare global effort.
In partnership with Dr. Richard McKeon, Dr. Reed led the 2012 revision of the US National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, first adopted in 2001. This included an important new addition:
- Goal 8. Promote suicide prevention as a core component of health care services
- 8.1. Promote the adoption of “zero suicides” as an aspirational goal by health care and community support systems that provide services and support to defined patient populations
Global Learning Community
In 2014, Dr. Reed and David Covington convened together to co-host the first Zero Suicide International summit in Oxford, United Kingdom. 15 individuals from New Zealand, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, the UK, and the United States joined others led by Julie Kerry and Aarti Chapman from NHS England and Professor Keith Hawton, internationally renowned suicide prevention leader from the University of Oxford.
Dr. Reed was also a member of the planning committee for the second summit in Atlanta in 2015, and a key architect of the International Declaration for Better Healthcare: Zero Suicide.