The Arizona Coalition for Military Families was founded in 2009 as a public/private partnership focused on building Arizona’s statewide capacity to care for, serve and support service members, veterans, their families and communities.
A Deepening Crisis
In 2015, the Arizona Violent Death Reporting System found that over one 18-month period of time, the risk of suicide to Arizona veterans was three to four times higher than the general population – despite the significant resources and effort invested in suicide prevention on the national level by both the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Arizona Coalition for Military Families and partners are committed to working together to forge a different approach to suicide prevention that involves major stakeholders to address the stressors and challenges facing the military and veteran population – earlier and more effectively.
Establishing the Foundation
The Office of the late Senator John McCain was instrumental in setting the conditions for this partnership. He and his team advocated for having Arizona designated as a pilot program site under the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, which provided an avenue for formal partnership between the VA entities within Arizona, the Coalition, Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services and all of the key stakeholders. With this foundation, the ACMF worked with Senator McCain’s Office, Senator Sinema’s Office, the VA, AHCCCS, TriWest, and many other government and community stakeholders to develop Be Connected.
Advancing Into the Future
With this foundation, the partners embarked on a year-long strategic planning process to determine a path forward for addressing suicide with an upstream prevention approach. Fortunately, the team was well prepared to undertake this work. Several years prior, the Arizona National Guard experienced the highest rate of suicide in the history of the organization from 2008 – 2010. As a result, the Adjutant General made suicide prevention the number one priority, and the Coalition team created the Be Resilient program. Due to this program, there were zero suicides for three consecutive years from 2011 – 2013.
The team took this experience and mapped out a program that would take the lessons learned on what was effective and expand it to reach Arizona’s 500,000+ service members, veterans, family members and their communities, and Be Connected was born.
Launch
Be Connected launched in the spring of 2017. The program started with just one direct service team member and the Coalition as the backbone organization. Since then, the team has grown to 50+ people dedicated to reaching, serving and connecting every service member, veteran and family member to the support and resources for all areas of need. Learn more about Be Connected and how you can be a part of this solution.
