Health Law, Policy & Management

Professor Selected for National Academies Committee on Veteran Suicide

Rachel Sayko Adams will join the committee, which aims to improve researchers’ ability to reduce suicide risk among veterans who do not use the VHA.

Rachel Sayko Adams was appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee that examined current practices and challenges for identifying and managing suicide risk among veterans who use non-Veteran Affairs healthcare systems. 

Adams, a research associate professor of health law, policy & management, and fellow committee members organized an online public workshop and a follow-up meeting of subject-matter experts. Adams says the events were specifically designed to explore three major issues:

• Optimal ways to identify veterans who receive their healthcare outside the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) system. 

• Best practices to inform veterans at non-VA health facilities about VA benefits, and to connect individuals with benefits for which they are eligible. 

• How states, healthcare systems, and community-based organizations account for and manage suicide risk among veterans who get health care are not engaged with VA and VHA systems.

The NASEM workshop, held on May 23, convened an interdisciplinary group of experts from various civilian health care and research settings to collaborate with Department of Veterans Affairs leaders. Adams says the committee’s workshop and follow-up meetings have the goal of “identifying challenges, knowledge gaps, and actionable policy changes and best practices to improve researchers’ ability to reduce suicide risk among veterans who do not use the VHA.”

The committee’s work comes at a pivotal time in the growing discussion about suicide among United States veterans. Adams says that despite substantial work to mitigate suicide risk among US veterans, and a corresponding slight downturn in veteran suicides in 2019 and 2020, suicide rates among veterans still exceed those of US civilians, according to data from the 2022 National Veteran Suicide report.

“While significant efforts have been undertaken to mitigate suicide risk among veterans in the US, our ability to implement suicide prevention efforts for veterans who do not use the VHA is more challenging since these veterans are dispersed across various civilian health care settings,” Adams says. “This is of critical importance because since 2001, there have been more veteran suicide deaths each year among veterans who do not use VHA for their health care, compared to veterans who use the VHA for their healthcare.”