# Supplement: Family Safety Net: Developing an upstream suicide prevention approach to encourage safe firearm storage in rural and remote Alaskan homes

> **NIH NIH R61** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2022 · $195,000

## Abstract

Summary: Suicide is a major and rising public health problem in the United States.1 In Alaska,
suicide rates are consistently triple the national rate8,10 and fully 60% of the suicide fatalities are due
to firearms.11,12 In rural Alaska Native (AN) communities, virtually all homes have multiple guns, which
increases suicide risk significantly.13,14 In the AN study region, youth suicide rates are 18 times that
of other American teens.15,16 This context presents an important opportunity to enhance safety and
prevent suicide deaths by restricting access to firearms in the people's homes. Restricting `lethal
means' for suicide prevention is one of the most effective strategies to date.17-19 Key challenges are
widespread uptake, particularly within high-risk and hard-to-reach populations.17,18, 20-22 The proposed
research will inform the development of the Family Safety Net (FSN), a public health approach that
builds on the collectivist, family-centric orientation of AN people by universally engaging adult family
members of youth in increasing their home safety. Our central hypothesis is that by supporting adult
family members in locking and unloading all household firearms, we can reduce a key environmental
risk factor that contributes to youth suicide in rural AN communities. Using a community-based
participatory approach, the study will integrate important culturally-specific considerations to support,
encourage, and assess safe firearm storage practices relevant to AN families. The formative research
will result in a feasible and acceptable FSN intervention that will undergo preliminary efficacy testing.
Our aims are to: (1) Characterize AN household firearm storage practices to inform intervention
development; (2) Iteratively develop and focus test the Family Safety Net (FSN) intervention; and (3)
Conduct a pilot randomized control trial (n=70, 35/group) to assess feasibility, acceptability, and
fidelity of the Family Safety Net (FSN) intervention, as well as examine preliminary efficacy at
increasing safe storage practices and expected mechanisms of change based on our theoretical
model. The proposed research is significant because effective safe storage interventions are
needed to address: 1) elevated rates of U.S. adolescent firearm suicides; and 2) disparities in AN
youth suicide rates. Key innovations include: 1) an upstream focus on universal youth suicide
prevention and family safe storage practices in a firearm-owning population; 2) addressing collectivist
cultural norms, as compared to individualistic norms, which can be an important for other populations;
and 3) a focus on tailoring intervention content to address the role of the family member, both gun
owners and others, in controlling firearm access. This formative research sets the stage for a larger
fully powered randomized trial to evaluate FSN efficacy to increase safe household firearm storage of
people who have multiple firearms, and whose youth are at extremely high risk for su...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10653325
- **Project number:** 3R61MH125757-01S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Lisa M. Wexler
- **Activity code:** R61 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $195,000
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-09-21 → 2023-09-20

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10653325

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10653325, Supplement: Family Safety Net: Developing an upstream suicide prevention approach to encourage safe firearm storage in rural and remote Alaskan homes (3R61MH125757-01S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10653325. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*