Jed Foundation, Educating Nurses on Suicide Prevention
A few years ago, I got a cold email from a blog reader who works for the Jed Foundation. I appreciated the note and was intrigued by the Jed Foundation, so we did a Zoom. Fast forward, Gotham Gives, our charity, became a donor of the Jed Foundation.
Gotham Gives invests in initiatives that reflect New York City’s rich diversity to improve systemic equity by creating social, educational, and cultural opportunities for all New Yorkers. We create impact through investment and collaboration. It is organizations like Jed and countless others who make an impact on people’s lives; the Government never will by itself, and it never has.
We have invested in many organizations that realize how to make change through education and programs. It is almost impossible to change the root of issues from gun control to suicide to incarceration, but you can make an impact with education.
We are really proud of this program that we funded below.
NEW YORK — School nurses play a critical role in suicide prevention and are often the first point of contact for students experiencing mental health issues or emotional distress. Today, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks, in partnership with the NYC Department of Health, and The Jed Foundation (JED), announced that the New York City Office of School Health (OSH) has partnered with JED, a leading national nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide in teens and young adults, to develop and scale a new standardized suicide prevention training course for New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) nurses working across more than 1,800 pre-K–12 public schools.
“Our schools aren’t just places where our children go to learn — they’re where they go to grow up, to find themselves, to make friends, and to have the support they need to get through whatever’s going on in their lives,” said Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack. “With this new partnership, we’re making sure that our school nurses have the training they need to identify warning signs of suicide and get at-risk young people the help they need. It’s a part of our broader mission to promote youth mental health, inside and outside our schools.”
“School-based nurses play an important role in our school communities and in the everyday lives of our young people. They may see young people at times of need whether a stomach ache, a needed band-aid, or a sprained ankle. School nurses don’t just tend to physical health needs though, they are also the frontlines of witnessing and supporting our kids’ mental health. Seeing when they might be feeling anxious, stressed, or overwhelmed. That’s why this partnership offering additional training to our school nurses around suicide prevention is so critical. It responds to a need and it gives new tools of support to our nurses and our students,” said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom.
Approximately 1,500 New York City school nurses, supporting 1.1 million students in the nation’s largest school district, will complete JED’s 90-minute, eight-module online course, Suicide Prevention for School Nurses, by the end of October. Launched in June after pilot testing with 30 NYCPS nurses, the course uses scenario-based learning and the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) tool to enhance nurses’ abilities to identify, screen, and refer students at risk for suicide. To date, at least 375 nurses have completed the course, with ratings on ability to identify warning signs and risk factors of suicide increasing by 3 points on average (on a 10-point scale) post-training. Participants have also learned about common mental health challenges, signs of distress, when to mobilize a crisis team, tips for managing emotional carryover and burnout, and more.
The 2023 NYC Teen Mental Health Survey from the Health Department found that 48 percent of teens experience depressive symptoms ranging from mild to severe. Nearly one in four NYC teens (24 percent) said that sometime in the past 12 months they had needed or wanted mental health care but did not get it.
“School is where young people spend a great deal of their time, and nurses are frequently the first faces pre-K–12 students turn to for help when they’re hurting physically or emotionally. For this reason, JED is proud to partner with OSH and NYCPS to create a foundational training that will provide all school nurses in America’s largest public school district with the knowledge they need to safeguard at-risk students and help prevent suicide,” said Tony Walker, JED’s Senior Vice President of Academic Programs. “Through this comprehensive public health approach, we hope to empower school nurses to initiate potentially life-saving conversations and create healthier school communities — both in and out of the classroom.”