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National suicide numbers and rates lag far behind, making it difficult for policy makers and researchers to evaluate suicide prevention efforts. Many suicide prevention advocates are frustrated with the limitations in suicide death and attempt surveillance lags, but it is likely there are models of more rapid reporting and data integration that can be extended to suicide. This roundtable will address the following questions to begin the discussion, to see how suicide surveillance efforts can be moved forward:
1. Are there emerging models of states using their own, more current vital statistics on suicide to link to other state level reports (e.g., hospital adverse event and/or suicide attempt data), state services (e.g, CMS/health care), policy changes (e.g., firearm laws; teacher mandated training in suicide prevention), or even economic trends (home foreclosures)?
2. What challenges have states faced in suicide data cleaning, merging/combining, and analyses?
3. Are there lessons learned from NVDRS? Or other efforts such as rapid reporting of flu or heroin OD deaths?
4. Who are the stakeholders using this data? What questions do they want answered? Do they know what questions could be asked?