title: Best Practices for Suicide Prevention Messaging and Evaluating California's "Know the Signs" Media Campaign.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although communication is a key component of US strategies to prevent suicide and there are a number of marketing campaigns promoting messages that suicide is a preventable public health problem, there has been little evaluation of these campaigns.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The study describes the development of a checklist of best practices for suicide prevention communication campaigns and the use of the checklist to evaluate California's investment in "Know the Signs" (KTS-M), a suicide prevention mass media campaign.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a literature review and solicited expert feedback to identify best practices and then used the RAND/UCLA appropriateness method to assess whether KTS-M was consistent with the identified best practices.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall, experts agreed that KTS-M adhered to most of the 46 checklist items and suggested that the campaign was among the best suicide prevention media campaigns they had observed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The checklist was developed through expert input and literature review and focuses only on media campaigns.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Given the nascent state of the evidence about what makes an effective suicide prevention message and the growing number of campaigns, the checklist of best practices reflects one way of promoting quality in this evolving field. The consistency between the experts' comments and their ratings of KTS-M suggests that the checklist may provide important guidance to inform the development of future campaigns and the evaluation of ongoing campaigns.
authors.affiliation: 1 RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Joie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Acosta
authors.affiliation: 1 RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Rajeev
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ramchand
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Computer Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
authors.forename: Amariah
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Becker
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D057189:Checklist; D003142:Communication; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012307:Risk Factors; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology; D000092864:Suicide Prevention
keywords: communication; program evaluation; suicide prevention