Analysis of statewide publicly-available data to identify community protective factors associated with reduced Alaska Native (AN) suicide risk

University Of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks AK

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Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT The goals of the Alaska Native Collaborative Hub for Research Resilience (ANCHRR) parent grant (U19 MH113138) are to: a) establish a central hub for Alaska that anchors and supports our collective efforts in reducing the burden of AN youth suicide; b) utilize scientific tools to recognize and build Alaska Native (AN) community-level strengths and protections against suicidal and other co-occurring adverse behaviors through a multilevel model of youth resilience that translates into community practice; and c) develop and sustain capacity to conduct research and use scientific tools to promote and increase Alaska Native youth and community well-being. ANCHRR?s research plan includes the measurement of protective factors in 4 categories: effective services, community development, self-determination/local control, and cultural continuity, through interviews with local experts in each of 64 rural AN study communities. This Administrative Supplement would expand and improve the methods for testing hypotheses related to protective community factors from AN youth suicide risk and to community-level moderators of AN youth resilience outcomes. The aims of this supplement request are aligned with the Specific Aims of the parent grant, and are as follows: Supplement Specific Aim 1 (SSA1): Gather community-level measures of social, economic, and institutional characteristics from newly identified publicly available sources as additional protective factors variables in the 'predictive' model in SA1 of the parent grant and assess the capability of these additional publicly available community-level protective variables to account for additional variance in community-level suicide and suicide- related outcomes. Supplement Specific Aim 2 (SSA2): Develop an index of community-level protection using publicly-available data identified in SSA1, to augment and potentially substitute for interview-based data generated in SA1 of the parent grant; the index is intended for use in the parent grant SA3 Alaska Community Resilience Mapping (AK-CRM), a method intended to allow communities to measure and strategically strengthen their protective capabilities to increase youth health and reduce the risk for suicide. .