Strategic Funding Helps Reduce Suicide Rates in Colorado

July 15, 2026 | Dymond Ruybal, Tate Steidley

What does it take to build a sustainable, statewide suicide prevention infrastructure? In Colorado, the answer lies in a robust prevention infrastructure, fueled not by a single source but by a strategic layering of state and federal funding that maximizes the reach and impact of critical programs like the Colorado-National Collaborative. 

The Colorado-National Collaborative is the State of Colorado’s comprehensive suicide prevention program, funded by both federal and state dollars. Administered by the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention, this initiative supports local organizations at the county level to implement strategies and activities across six core pillars:  

• Access to safer suicide care.  
• Connectedness.  
• Economic stability.  
• Education and awareness. 
• Lethal means safety.
• Postvention.  

Braiding Funds for State and Local Impact 

Multiple state and federal funding sources, including CDC’s Comprehensive Suicide Prevention grant, allow the Office of Suicide Prevention to maximize limited resources, reduce duplication of efforts, and fill gaps that a single funding source cannot cover. Braiding both state and federal funding also provides the office with the flexibility to support local grantees who are implementing Colorado-National Collaborative activities in ways that best meet their unique community needs: 

• Supporting Staff Time and Supplementing Budgets: For example, longer-term federal grants can support dedicated staff time for county-level backbone agencies, while the state can supplement grantee budgets with smaller or more flexible funding sources. These supplemental funds can cover specific allowable costs — such as purchasing or distributing safe-storage devices to bolster lethal means activities, or food for community trainings and meetings to increase community engagement — that may not be permitted under other funding sources.  
• Developing Statewide Resources, Provided at No Cost to Communities: Braided funding also allows the Office of Suicide Prevention to develop statewide resources and infrastructure that are provided at no cost to Colorado-National Collaborative communities. For instance, it supports suicide prevention campaigns and tools like Man Therapy and Operation Veteran Strong. Colorado-National Collaborative grantees can use resources from the state (e.g., posters, wallet cards, stickers) and become local messengers, promoting and expanding these suicide prevention programs across the state. This arrangement benefits not only the grantees but also the Office of Suicide Prevention, as the state learns what resources meet community needs and supports continued improvements to continue statewide suicide prevention resources.  
• Working Closely with Local Health Systems, Expanding State-Level Support: Zero Suicide is another example of how this braided funding strategy combines targeted funding for framework implementation in pilot health systems. While the Office of Suicide Prevention supports Zero Suicide at the state level, Colorado-National Collaborative grantees work closely with their local health systems by connecting them directly to office staff to support Zero Suicide implementation at the county level.  

Growing the Collaborative with a Stronger Evaluation Model 

The Office of Suicide Prevention began a pilot evaluation of the Colorado-National Collaborative with the first six counties in 2020, when grantees began to implement a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention in their communities. Grantees of the office, as well as state and national partners, used a collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation approach, which identified what activities were needed to start their local comprehensive suicide prevention efforts.

In 2024, Colorado-National Collaborative partners and the Office of Suicide Prevention used the pilot evaluation findings to develop a new evaluation model based on a robust collective impact model. The evaluation now describes the core activities the Colorado-National Collaborative grantees must carry out locally. The updated evaluation model also helps show how shared resources, coordinated trainings, and local implementation contribute to statewide suicide prevention capacity. 

That evaluation has helped inform the growth of the Colorado-National Collaborative. Bolstered by the critical support that multiple funding sources provide, the Office of Suicide Prevention has successfully grown the collaborative from six to 15 counties since 2020.  

Participant Successes 

Participating communities have built the capacity to advance local comprehensive suicide prevention strategies. Grantees have either participated in or hosted over 700 events promoting community connectedness. Additionally, grantees have provided community helper trainings like Question, Persuade, and Refer, Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, and Mental Health First Aid, to 3,000 community members to promote suicide prevention education and awareness.  

Through local coalitions and partnership building, grantees have also organized postvention response teams and plans, tailored to fit their individual community needs and resources. Currently, all communities involved in the collaborative have partnered with local organizations to reduce suicide risk, including 54 local organizations to help strengthen people’s financial security and 72 local organizations to promote the safe storage of lethal means (i.e., firearms and medications). 

Promising Program Results and a Continued Commitment 

The factors that influence suicide are complex and multifaceted. There is no singular cause or reason why someone dies by suicide. A comprehensive approach like the Colorado-National Collaborative model encourages local communities to implement multiple suicide prevention strategies that are intentionally upstream to make communities more resilient to suicide. Early indicators suggest that counties involved in the collaborative have seen improvements in their suicide rates since its inception:  

• Between 2020 and 2024, the age-adjusted suicide rate declined 9.8% for the entire population in the six original participating counties (from 25.13 suicides per 100,000 people in 2020 to 22.67 suicides per 100,000 people in 2024).
• Montezuma County, which had the highest age-adjusted suicide rate among the original participating counties in 2020 (44.86 suicides per 100,000 people), recorded a 41.6% decline in the suicide rate in 2024 (26.2 suicides per 100,000 people).  
• The age-adjusted suicide rate for the combined populations in the two regions that joined the Colorado-National Collaborative in 2022 has remained stable since 2022.  

While suicide rates are influenced by many complex factors, these early trends are encouraging and suggest the value of sustained, coordinated, upstream prevention work. These results demonstrate that leveraging a broad, holistic prevention effort alongside substantial and strategic financial support from various sources is a promising model for strengthening suicide prevention capacity across communities. The Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention remains committed to this essential partnership with grantees across the state.