Lisa Horowitz, Ph.D., MPH

Dr. Lisa Horowitz is a Pediatric Psychologist and a Senior Associate Scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health at NIH. Dr. Horowitz received her doctorate in clinical psychology from George Washington University, completed a Pediatric Health Service Research Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and obtained a Master’s in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. The major focus of Dr. Horowitz’s research has been in the area of suicide prevention in the medical setting that involves validating and implementing tools for clinicians, such as the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ). She is also one of the co-authors of the Blueprint for Youth Suicide Prevention, released by the American Academy of Pediatrics this past March. Dr. Horowitz is collaborating with hospitals, and outpatient clinics both nationally and globally, assisting with the implementation of suicide risk screening and management of patients who screen positive using the ASQ Toolkit and Youth Suicide Risk Clinical Pathways.

2024 Presentation:

Feasible Suicide Risk Screening and Assessment: Leveraging Medical Providers as Partners in Suicide Prevention

This presentation will describe the public health crisis of suicide and how healthcare providers can be partners in suicide prevention. Research that was translated into feasible universal suicide risk screening programs, which can identify patients at risk and bridge them to critical mental health care, will be discussed. Disparities in suicide rates and how screening can add to health equity will be presented. Additionally, the presenter will discuss how a clinical pathway for suicide risk screening can be flexibly adapted and implemented into a variety of healthcare settings.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain knowledge on a brief epidemiology of suicide and its application to the medical setting
• Describe research on suicide risk screening and management tools and how they are applied to real-world clinical settings.
• Describe the importance of healthcare providers in screening and assessing for suicide risk.
• Describe how screening as part of a 3-tiered clinical pathway makes management feasible in busy healthcare settings.