Nearly three decades ago, Brian Ahmedani was part of the Henry Ford Health team that developed the Zero Suicide model for health care providers: a novel framework built on the idea that suicide is preventable when health systems take responsibility for identifying risk and providing consistent, evidence-based care. That means that, for example, all patients are routinely screened for suicide risk, and clinicians and staff are trained to recognize and have direct conversations about it. In 2025, a major study published in JAMA Network Open showed that the model—which has been adopted throughout the U.S. and in more than 30 countries—decreased suicide attempts from as much as 11.3 to 0.3 per 100,000 people in participating health centers. “We pursue zero because we don’t accept that we shouldn’t try to prevent every single suicide,” Ahmedani says. “We’re not going to stop until we do.”
