About ASPIRES

Youth suicide is a serious health issue. However, there is hope. Suicide is preventable.  

• We study ways to identify youth and adolescents who are at risk for suicide and provide them with the help they need where and when they need it.  
• We aim to improve existing suicide prevention efforts and create new programs, resources and solutions that are safe and effective.  
• We help put these programs in place in schools, doctors’ offices, community centers and other care settings.  

By finding new ways to reach at-risk kids and teens earlier and where they are, we can expand suicide prevention care, make it more accessible, feasible and sustainable, and save lives.  

Over 250 public and private partners are working together to support a national effort to reduce the suicide rate by 20% by 2025. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) launched the Practice-Based Suicide Prevention Research Centers program to support the creation of four new Suicide Prevention Centers across the country, including our center. Led by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Center for Accelerating Suicide Prevention in Real-World Settings (ASPIRES) focuses specifically on suicide prevention in youth and adolescents.  

Nationwide Children’s has made pediatric and adolescent mental and behavioral health a priority, and our researchers continue to lead the charge. ASPIRES provides another way to address the needs of children and teens across the country.  

Who We Are  

ASPIRES extends the work of the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research (CSPR) and Behavioral Health Services at Nationwide Children’s. It also leverages the expertise of faculty at The Ohio State University and various community experts. 

ASPIRES Co-Directors 

Jeff Bridge, PhD, director of CSPR, and Cynthia Fontanella, PhD, a principal investigator in CSPR, lead ASPIRES.  

What We Do

Our mission is to accelerate the development and implementation of effective interventions to reduce suicide in children and adolescents.

Our Goals

Our research aims to reduce youth suicide risk and prevent youth suicide and attempted suicide.

• Test and improve existing suicide prevention efforts: By studying the current care practices, services and tools that aim to prevent youth suicide, we can make them more effective. 
• Create and test new screening tools and programs that are safe and effective: We can create new and better ways to reach youth who are at risk of suicide in the places they’re already receiving care.
• Understand youth suicide and suicidal behavior: Studying risk factors and the characteristics of youth with these risk factors allows us to improve suicide prevention care practices specifically for these children.
• Find what works well in the different places where adults have opportunities to help kids: By creating programs for and conducting research in schools, doctors’ offices, community centers, faith-based organizations, and other systems and settings that serve youth at risk for suicide, we can help identify which suicide prevention tools and strategies are acceptable, feasible and appropriate for each setting and population.
• Get the best tools and resources into these settings at a faster rate: Our research can help expand access to the right tools in the right settings and ensure professionals have the instructions, resources, and support they need to use them.

Specifically, we hope to improve how communities can identify at-risk kids and tailor prevention strategies to their specific needs by developing ways of screening them earlier and more often and understanding risk factors they may face. We are also working to provide communities with more options for treating youth in crisis. Finally, we aim to encourage safe firearm storage to protect at-risk children and teens from lethal suicide attempt methods. 

Click here to learn more about our current projects.

Our Strategies 

• Involve experts from various fields, specialties, industries and settings on the research teams to consider diverse insights, approaches and technologies and generate new and different solutions.
• Conduct pilot research studies, which test promising new ideas and create the first set of data needed to determine if they warrant further study.
• Engage parents, doctors, community members and others as key stakeholders who work in, interact with and make decisions about at-risk kids and their schools and care settings to develop best practices to reach at risk youth where they are. 
• Evaluate outcomes and share findings, tools and data with our partners and key stakeholders.
• Train students and early-career researchers from diverse backgrounds to study suicide prevention in routine practice-based settings.

Why Our Research Matters 

Suicide in children and adolescents is a major public health issue.

• Nationally, suicide has emerged as the second leading cause of death for children ages 10-19 years old. 
• Nearly 1 in 6 teens has seriously contemplated suicide in the past year.
• Suicide complex and tragic, and it affects people of all backgrounds. 

However, suicide is often preventable through early identification of risk factors and if communities are provided with the right tools and guidance on the right times and places to use them. 

Through research, we can create these tools and guidelines and find out which tools are most helpful for different kids and teens based on their specific needs.

Suicide prevention research is important for supporting young people who are struggling and saving lives By studying what effective suicide prevention should look like, we can identify the concrete, practical steps that families, friends, doctors, school professionals and more can take to make a difference.

Our NIH Funding

ASPIRES is one of four Suicide Prevention Centers currently supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Practice-Based Suicide Prevention Research Centers program. 

The NIMH launched the program, modeled after its Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness (ALACRITY) Research Center program, to support the national effort to reduce the suicide rate by 20% by 2025. 

NIMH-funded Suicide Prevention Centers are integrated, transdisciplinary research programs aimed at developing, refining, and testing effective and scalable approaches for reducing suicide rates in the United States. 

They support research that could not be achieved using standard research project grant mechanisms and aim to speed the translation of research into practice using: 

1. Practice-based infrastructure that uses clinical practice settings as a place to develop new research ideas and test and refine interventions and service delivery strategies.  
2. Transdisciplinary research teams that incorporate new insights, approaches and emerging technologies from experts in a variety of areas. 
3. A deployment-focused approach that considers the perspectives of patients, families, providers and key administrators to develop interventions and service strategies that can be rapidly integrated into practice 
4. Opportunities for trainees and early career investigators to grow a well-trained, diverse suicide prevention research workforce.  

Researchers at Nationwide Children’s received Program Project/Center Grants (P50) funding to support the creation of ASPIRES in August 2022. The award provides $14 million over five years.

Read the full press release.