State suicide programs in Virginia and Maine will

receive a total of $1.8 million over the next three years

from the National Center for Injury Prevention and

Control Centers, part of the National Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA.

In September, the CDC announced it will award

Virginia, Maine, Washington and Michigan a total of $3.6

million in cooperative grants over the next three years for

public injury prevention programs. Virginia will receive

$320,000 annually and Maine will receive $280,000 each

year for state suicide prevention efforts. Washington and

Michigan will use their awards to combat falls by the

elderly. (In the United States falls are the leading cause of

injury-related deaths among people 65 and older, and one

out of every three Americans 65 or older reportedly falls

each year.)

"We received an e-mail announcement that went to

state injury prevention programs this summer," said James

B. Vetter, the suicide and youth violence prevention

consultant for the Center for Injury and Violence

Prevention at the Virginia Department of Health. An

advertisement also appeared in The Federal Register. There

was only a 30-day period to apply.

According to Norman Black, spokesman for the CDC,

"The short application period meant anyone who applied

had to have a structure already in place. The goal of this

[CDC offering] was to strengthen state public health

agencies’ ability to develop, design and implement a

comprehensive targeted injury prevention program that

addresses an injury problem of high public health

important in the states," he said.

Chery M. DiCara heads up the Maine Youth Suicide

Prevention Program (MYSPP), which started in 1998. It is

a statewide program administered by five agencies in that

state’s Governor Children’s Cabinets program. "While the

program is based on a comprehensive plan, we have lacked

the resources to build the full program to bring to the

Maine communities," she said. "With this cooperative

agreement, we will be able to build upon the existing

structure of MYSPP to implement and evaluate a schoolcommunity-

based intervention in 10 local high schools

and their surrounding communities."