Depending on the size of your existing coalition, your whole group may play a role in developing your strategic plan. However, if you have a large coalition, consider seeking volunteers to serve on a strategic planning subcommittee. This subcommittee should involve the data subcommittee partners and/or CNA work group members, as appropriate. Make sure your planning subcommittee includes people from groups that the data show have an increased risk for suicide and that represent the diversity of your community. Invite new members from any groups that may be underrepresented. See the Unity element for guidance.

If you do not yet have a suicide prevention coalition in place, see the Unity element and begin by developing community partnerships key to suicide prevention. You will need these partnerships in place before engaging in strategic planning.

There are many strategic planning models available, including SPRC’s Strategic Planning Approach and SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework. There is no right or wrong model. But it is important to choose a model that is understandable to your strategic planning work group.

Strategic planning models are useful because they provide frameworks, theories, and tested strategies for effectively translating identified community needs into real-world practice. These models can help keep your strategic planning work group on track by providing clear road maps for what to include versus what not to include in strategic plans. They also provide essential guidance for how to incorporate the key considerations of equity, cultural humility, pros and cons, and strengths and weaknesses. When you use a formal model, you will strengthen the overall content and usability of your strategic plan. Check out the following list of formal strategic planning models available for community members to use free of charge.

Strategic Planning Models

• SPRC’s Strategic Planning Approach: Created specifically for the suicide prevention field, this model provides six steps to guide prevention efforts in communities.
  • You can take a two-hour, self-paced online training on SPRC’s strategic planning model to learn more about this model.
• SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework: Initially created for the substance misuse prevention field, SPF is used by a variety of cross-cutting prevention fields to guide local efforts.
• World Health Organization’s Preventing Suicide: A Community Engagement Toolkit: Created to help communities around the world strengthen their suicide prevention efforts, pages 21-40 provide a model for community action planning.

Your work group’s next key task is to review and analyze the available state and national morbidity and mortality data and CNA results to inform your strategic planning efforts. Ideally, you will be able to use both types of data. See Data Key Area 1: Accessing Systems Data for Planning and Data Key Area 2: Gathering Information on Community Context for more information on how to do this. Use your chosen strategic planning model from Step 2: Identify a strategic planning model just above to prioritize which groups you will focus on reaching.

Based on the groups you prioritized, if possible, consider what circumstances of suicide are most common. For example, if middle-aged men have the highest suicide rate in your community, are there people within that group with particular circumstances, such as construction workers or those with a substance use disorder, who are at especially high risk?