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Colleen Carr, MPH

Director, National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention
EDC
Waltham, Massachusetts

Colleen serves as the Director of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), the nation’s public-private partnership for suicide prevention. The Action Alliance is charged with coordinating a comprehensive national suicide prevention response in the U.S and works with more than 250 partner organizations to coordinate implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Colleen contributed to the development of the 2012 & 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and provided leadership to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2021 Call to Action to Implement the National Strategy. She works with Action Alliance partners from across government and the private sector to advance the Action Alliance's national priorities and leads the Action Alliance Secretariat team at EDC.

Colleen’s work to convene federal leaders, professional association executives, non-profits, accreditation organizations, and industry leaders helps advance national initiatives to address some of the country’s leading policy issues around suicide prevention. She co-faciliates the Consortium for Preventing Law Enforcement Suicide and helped catalyze the Mental Health Storytelling Coalition, an entertainment industry-led effort to increase accurate depictions of mental health and suicide in content produced across the industry.

Colleen has led national task forces and advisory groups that have developed national guidelines to inform policy and system change to advance suicide prevention. From April 2020-2022, Colleen served as the Director for the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention National Response to COVID-19, an initiative comprised of 30+ senior executives from government, business, and non-profit sectors established to address the mental health and suicide challenges related to the pandemic. Colleen regularly serves as a presenter at national conferences, summits, congressional briefings, and expert panels and is regularly featured in national media outlets.

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