Pitt Psychiatry & Division of General Internal Medicine Awarded $16.2M NIMH Center Grant Focused on Addressing Adolescent Suicide with Emphasis on Black & Hispanic Youth

 

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded Pitt Psychiatry a 5-year renewal of their P50 Center of Excellence for the Enhancing Triage and Utilization for Depression and Emergent Suicidality (ETUDES) Center. First funded in 2018, the ETUDES Center is led by David Brent, MD (Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Endowed Chair in Suicide Studies) and co-led by Bruce Rollman, MD, MPH (UPMC Endowed Chair in General Internal Medicine and Director, Center for Behavioral Health, Media and Technology), and with Jami Young, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry at Children's Hospital of Philadephia) joining them as a new Center co-director.

Additional DGIM ETUDES investigators holding key roles include Kaleab Abebe, PhD (Director, Center for Clinical Trials and Data Coordination and the CRHC Data Center) as lead ETUDES statistician; Megan Hamm, PhD (Associate Director for Qualitative Analysis, CRHC Data Center and Director, Qual EASE) as lead faculty for qualitative methods; Charles Jonassaint, PhD, MHS (Associate Professor of Medicine) as Co-PI for a R34 ETUDES study; and Amy Anderson, MS, LPC as lead administrator for the Methods Core. They are joined by a national team of investigators from Columbia University, Georgia Tech, Hunter College, the University of Oregon, and Kaiser Permanente who bring their expertise in psychiatry, psychology, pediatrics, internal medicine, nursing, epidemiology, implementation science, statistics, bioinformatics, computer science, and economics. Together, they will develop implementation-ready tools for use in pediatric primary care settings to reduce the rate of adolescent suicide and suicidal behavior, and train a diverse national cohort of researchers with capacity to address the current mental health crisis among youth.

The incidence of depression, suicidal behavior, and suicide among American youth has increased by more than 40% during the past decade, placing unprecedented demands on pediatric health care providers. As these rates have increased sharply in adolescent youth of color, ETUDES will place special emphasis on addressing racial and ethnic health disparities.  Moreover, the Center will develop and test all of its tools and interventions collaboratively with adolescent patients, their families, pediatric and mental health clinicians, and community representatives to ensure their broad acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness to meet what the US Surgeon General and the American Academy of Pediatrics have identified as a national emergency.

Additional DGIM staff with key roles in the Center include:

  • Tim Bragg
  • Robert Feldman
  • Lori Gaston, BS
  • Linda Quinn
  • Charlene Xie, MSIS

For more information about the ETUDES Center, please visit www.etudes.pitt.edu.