Ramchand Rajeev, Eberhart Nicole K, Guo Christopher, Pedersen Eric R, Savitsky Terrance Dean, Tanielian Terri, Voorhies Phoenix
Rand Health Q. 2014 Dec 30;4(3):16.
In response to the elevated rate of suicide among U.S. service members, a congressionally mandated task force recommended that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) create a unified, comprehensive strategic plan for suicide prevention research to ensure that DoD-funded studies align with DoD's goals. To help meet this objective, a RAND study cataloged the research funded by DoD and other entities that is directly relevant to military personnel, examined the extent to which current research maps to DoD's strategic research needs, and provided recommendations to ensure that proposed research strategies align with the national research strategy and integrate with DoD's data collection and program evaluation strategies. The study found that although DoD is one of the largest U.S. funders of research related to suicide prevention, its current funding priorities do not consistently reflect its research needs. The study indexed each of 12 research goals according to rankings of importance, effectiveness, cultural acceptability, cost, and learning potential provided by experts who participated in a multistep elicitation exercise. The results revealed that research funding is overwhelmingly allocated to prevention goals already considered by experts to be effective. Other goals considered by experts to be important and appropriate for the military context receive relatively little funding and have been the subject of relatively few studies, meaning that there is still much to learn about these strategies. Furthermore, DoD, like other organizations, suffers from a research-to-practice gap. The most promising results from studies funded by DoD and other entities do not always find their way to those responsible for implementing suicide prevention programs that serve military personnel. The RAND study recommended approaches to thoughtfully integrate the latest research findings into DoD's operating procedures to ensure that evidence-based approaches can benefit suicide prevention programs and prevent the further loss of lives to suicide.
为应对美国军人自杀率上升的问题，一个由国会授权成立的特别工作组建议美国国防部（DoD）制定一项统一、全面的自杀预防研究战略计划，以确保国防部资助的研究与国防部的目标保持一致。为帮助实现这一目标，兰德公司的一项研究对国防部和其他实体资助的、与军事人员直接相关的研究进行了编目，考察了当前研究与国防部战略研究需求的匹配程度，并提出了相关建议，以确保拟议的研究战略与国家研究战略保持一致，并与国防部的数据收集和项目评估战略相结合。研究发现，尽管国防部是美国与自杀预防相关研究的最大资助者之一，但其目前的资助重点并不能始终反映其研究需求。该研究根据参与多步骤启发式练习的专家提供的重要性、有效性、文化可接受性、成本和学习潜力排名，对12个研究目标进行了索引。结果显示，研究资金绝大多数都分配给了专家们已经认为有效的预防目标。专家们认为对军事背景重要且合适的其他目标获得的资金相对较少，且相关研究也相对较少，这意味着对于这些战略仍有很多需要了解的地方。此外，与其他组织一样，国防部也存在研究与实践脱节的问题。国防部和其他实体资助的研究中最有前景的结果并不总是能传达给负责实施为军事人员服务的自杀预防项目的人员。兰德公司的研究建议了一些方法，以深思熟虑地将最新研究结果纳入国防部的操作程序，以确保基于证据的方法能够惠及自杀预防项目，并防止自杀造成更多生命损失。
