Suicide is a leading cause of death in the USA, and its incidence has increased substantially in recent years. Observational studies have used large, linked databases to investigate risk factors for suicide, but data generally originate from a small number of similar sources. Prevention efforts may be strengthened by linking data from diverse sources across multiple sectors. The New Opportunities for Health and Resilience Measures for Suicide Prevention project aims to develop a resource for characterising key risk and protective factors for suicide outcomes by linking state-level death records with county-level data from 12 administrative sources, including medical, legal and social service records, among others. Administrative records of death, emergency medical services, emergency department syndromic surveillance, homelessness services, psychiatric crisis services, jail stays, domestic violence referrals and Medicaid/Medicare claims will be obtained through partnerships with source agencies. Death records are available for Washington State, while all other records are available for residents of King County, Washington. Temporal availability varies, but records generally cover the years 2014 to 2023. An iterative machine learning paradigm will be used to link individuals across different records, and events will be harmonised and deduplicated. This study has been approved by the Washington State Institutional Review Board, and data sharing agreements have been established with each contributing data source. Descriptive information will be disseminated via public data dashboards of suicide and non-fatal suicide behaviours. Analytic studies will be disseminated in peer-reviewed scientific journal publications.
Hensley et al. (Mon,) studied this question.