SPRINGFIELD, Va. – Hope For The Warriors recently joined the PREVENTS Office and its multi-agency national effort to lower veteran suicide rates by providing access to critical resources.
On March 5, 2019, President Trump signed Executive Order 1386:1 President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS) to empower veterans and lower the suicide rate through the development and implementation of a national public health Roadmap.
Hope For The Warriors, a national nonprofit that assists veterans, service members and military families with a variety of programming including clinical health and wellness, sports and recreation and transition services, will work with the PREVENTS Task Force to advance and improve mental health and suicide prevention efforts for service members, veterans and their families through its programing.
“Community-based organizations and initiatives are key to supporting the emotional health and well-being of veterans, service members and military families, which is critical to preventing suicide,” said Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, PREVENTS Executive Director. “We are grateful to organizations like Hope For The Warriors for its work and we are pleased to partner with them to promote the important messages of the REACH public health campaign as we work together to save lives.”
Together, with a shared goal of improving veterans’ well-being, the two organizations’ objectives are:
- Extending the reach and dissemination of suicide prevention protocols and tools to educate healthcare professionals.
- Expanding the reach of complementary educational resources.
- Reducing the burden of suicide by increasing awareness about mental health and suicide prevention and empowering individuals to play a role in prevention.
- With specialized programming, increasing resiliency in the military community as a prevention tool.
“Veteran suicide is a tragic reality and has become an oft-cited data point; the reality is that clearly-defined predictors are difficult to catalogue as part of a logical equation where the sum of all factors leads to another self-inflicted veteran death,” said Robin Kelleher, co-founder and president/CEO of Hope For The Warriors. “Hope For The Warriors knows that the opportunity to instill resilience starts at a young age at home, but can be impacted by an individual’s engagement with society, military service and community.
“We all — the VA, the Department of Defense, veteran service organizations and care providers — have an obligation to ensure military family wellness is a priority at every level: individual, community, state and national through continuous collaborative communication with each other. Therefore, we’re honored to continue our work in battling veteran suicide with the PREVENTS Task Force to provide hope for military families.”
For more information on Hope For The Warriors, visit hopeforthewarriors.org, Facebook or Twitter.
About Hope For The Warriors: Founded in 2006, Hope For The Warriors is a national nonprofit dedicated to restoring a sense of self, family and hope for post-9/11 veterans, service members and military families. Since its inception, Hope For The Warriors has served over 30,000 through a variety of support programs focused on clinical health and wellness, sports and recreation and transition. One of the nonprofit’s first programs, Military Spouse and Caregiver Scholarships, has awarded 150 scholarships to caregivers and families of the fallen. In addition, Run For The Warriors has captured the hearts of over 27,500 since 2010. For more information, visit hopeforthewarriors.org, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
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