Suicide-prevention committee approves city-hosted website and plans school-focused 988 outreach
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Summary
Laredo’s Suicide Prevention Committee voted to host its 988/awareness website under the city domain, discussed naming (SPC/SPAC), and organized school PSAs, student activities and mental-health resource distribution including 'mental-health boxes.'
The Suicide Prevention Committee agreed Feb. 25 to proceed with a city-hosted website for its 988 awareness materials and committed to a set of outreach actions, including school-based PSAs, student-created videos and distribution of mental-health 'boxes' to the community.
Committee members reported that the website URL they had been using required an unwieldy external domain string for promotional materials. Unidentified Speaker 7, who led the website effort, said the site can be hosted on the city domain and proposed a naming convention that would align with other committees. “Our current workflow is that we propose the changes or edits to the website to our public information officer, Mr. Adam Perez, and he subsequently vets the content and uploads into the website,” the speaker said. The committee debated whether to include the word "awareness" in the acronym (SPAC vs. SPC) and approved a motion to adopt the cleaner city-hosted URL and naming option by voice vote.
Members outlined school-centered outreach: using student-produced PSAs and short social-media videos (TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram), poster-board competitions, banners at high schools and middle schools, and volunteer outreach to superintendent-level advisory groups. Several members suggested a May event for Mental Health Awareness month and weekly lunchtime engagement at campuses in March and April.
Stephanie, a case worker with the Public Health Program, described free community mental-health services her team provides, including telepsychiatry, on-site screenings and a traveling outreach unit. She displayed mental-health boxes containing a pledge card, “52 reasons to live” cards and stress-management 'positive pickles' that the health department distributes. She noted the web-based resource reasonsToStay.co.uk as an example but cautioned it is U.K.-based and its referral resources are not U.S.-based.
The committee also confirmed a loss team (volunteer support personnel, trained mental-health professionals and suicide-loss survivors) under the Area Health Education Center umbrella; a press conference to announce the team will be scheduled. The committee asked staff to continue developing procedures for referral and follow-up and to coordinate promotional materials with the city’s public information officer.
The committee moved and carried a voice vote to accept the proposed city-hosted URL/name and to continue exploring creative awareness strategies. Volunteers were recruited to lead school outreach and to assemble and distribute mental-health boxes.
