Background: Suicide rates among Veterans were over 70% higher than non-Veterans in 2022, and nearly 60% had not recently used the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Veterans have unique experiences and healthcare needs. VHA provides military culturally competent suicide prevention care to Veterans. There is a lack of research demonstrating that community agencies are adequately prepared to provide military culturally competent care, when appropriate.
Purpose: The purpose of this analysis was to understand organizational readiness and gaps related to providing military culturally competent Veteran suicide prevention programming in community agencies.
Methods: Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with 24 Veteran-serving community agencies to assess each organization's interactions with and navigation of VHA and care coordination, suicide prevention policies, procedures, and quality improvement, staff training on suicide prevention and military cultural competency, Veteran status screening procedures, crisis line dissemination, and suicide prevention metric tracking.
Results: Organizations lack awareness of their role in Veteran suicide prevention, and lack of readiness to implement comprehensive and military culturally competent Veteran suicide prevention programming. Salient implementation needs included: screening for Veteran status, collection of metrics, military cultural competency and suicide prevention training, Veterans Crisis Line dissemination, suicide prevention policies and standardized operating procedures, and care coordination between community agencies and VHA.
Conclusions: Findings suggest a need to bolster intraorganizational readiness to provide comprehensive and tailored suicide prevention programming to Veterans receiving care in the community with the aim of strengthening a community-wide safety net to reduce Veteran suicide deaths.
Keywords: Veteran; military cultural competence; public health; suicide prevention.
Veterans are at an increased risk for suicide compared to non-Veterans. Veterans who receive healthcare with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) receive comprehensive and military culturally competent suicide prevention-related programming and services. Many Veterans who died by suicide had not received recent VHA care, therefore did not receive those services. Community organizations that provide services or healthcare to Veterans need targeted suicide prevention intraorganizational programming that is sensitive to the unique needs of this population. This study interviewed Veteran serving community organizations and found that organizations lacked military culturally competent suicide prevention programming, such as: requiring suicide prevention training for staff, asking clients if they served in the military, determining if a Veteran is at risk for suicide, creating policies for treating a Veteran at risk for suicide, and providing effective care for Veterans at risk for suicide. Community organizations may benefit from external support with incorporating Veteran-specific suicide prevention programming.
© Society of Behavioral Medicine 2026. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.