Our research team

We are dedicated to developing Public Education Programming to impact Veteran suicide prevention

Current project: Development of a Sustainable Public Awareness Campaign to Prevent Veteran Suicides


We are a collaborative team from academic institutions, public, private and non-profit agencies dedicated to using Veteran focus groups, feedback surveying processes and state of the art marketing techniques to build our Public Health Messaging program to prevent Veteran suicides. 

See our Featured Videos, Radio, and Email advertisments

Check out our advertising gallery here.

We have developed full length video advertisements designed to engage, inform, change the dialog and motivate change and hope. Our project is designed to prevent suicide by informing the public about these issues.

Also go to and check out our channel!
Check out our MEDIA kick off EVENT!

Take this survey to help us improve our advertisements and messages. 

 

The following are some of our manuscripts and presentations from our 1st project: Effect of Mass Communication on Veteran Suicide Prevention: Help Seeking & Firearm Safety Behaviors

  1. Veteran exposure to suicide prevention messages attitudes about firearm storage baseline (Draft)
  2. Project presented at the American Psychology Association Annual Convention Summer 2023

Medical College of Wisconsin

MCW/COMPREHENSIVE INJURY CENTER

Sara Kohlbeck, PH.D., MPH,

Director of Suicide Prevention, Project Team Role: Co-investigator/data analysis

Psychiatry Department

Bertrand D. Berger, Ph.D.,  Assistant Professor, Clinical Psychologist, Principal Investigator

Mark Flower, Veteran Peer Outreach Specialist, Focus Group facilitator

 

 Gun Shop project of Wisconsin, State of National violent death reporting system

Jean Papalia

Team lead for the Wisconsin VA’s Governor’s Challenge – lethal means, 

Project Team Role: Firearm storage messaging,

War Memorial Center, Milwaukee

Co Nguyen, Acting President and CEO, War Memorial Center

Dan Buttery, Former President & CEO, Director of Marketing and Advertising

Mary Bridges, Public Relations consultant, Creative Advertising, Interim Chair for Wisconsin Veteran Broadcasting Coalition (WVBC)

VA Medical Center, Milwaukee

Michael McBride, MD

Project Team Role: Focus groups/Message development/Veteran consultant

Jamie Noffsinger, Ph.D.

Project Team Role: Focus groups/Message development/Veteran consultant

Dona Drew, MSW

Community Engagement & Partnership Coordinator, Veteran, Project Team Role: Community outreach, member WVBC.

David Walter

VA Public Affairs, Project Team Role: Messaging, press releases, member WVBC.

 

Wisconsin Broadcasters Association

Michell Vetterkind, CAE
President & CEO

Project Team Role: Public Education Program support, Marketing team

University of Wisconsin/Madison Campus - NamuWiki

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Nick Buttrick, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Psychology, Project team role: Messaging, member of WVBC.