New Intermountain Healthcare Community Health Program Director to Focus on Suicide Prevention

Intermountain Healthcare has named Morissa Sobelson as Community Health Program Director, to develop, support, and implement community health strategies with a focus on suicide prevention at Intermountain’s 180 clinics in Utah and Idaho.

She will provide system-level leadership of Intermountain’s suicide prevention initiatives and is responsible for coordinating with identified leaders to align all internal and community-based work on this important public health issue.

Sobelson has supported Intermountain’s community health efforts over the past three years as an intern, consultant, and administrative fellow by leading two action-oriented research studies to evaluate clinician roles in suicide assessment and management, providing thought leadership and strategic support to clinicians, healthcare leaders, policymakers, and community stakeholders to generate collective action plans to prevent suicide, and analyzing epidemiological, financial, and qualitative data to help inform changes in policy and practice. 

As a research associate at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Sobelson was part of a team that conducted a contracted study for the Utah Legislature on the epidemiology of deaths by suicide that included firearms. 

"Since joining Intermountain Healthcare as an administrative fellow, Morissa has had a positive impact on our community health work. She approaches public health challenges like suicide prevention by identifying evidence-based interventions and finding collaborative, impactful ways to implement those interventions. I'm thrilled to have Morissa lead our suicide prevention efforts, and I look forward to the lifesaving work she and her team will deliver in our communities," said Mikelle Moore, Intermountain’s senior vice president of Community Health.

Intermountain continues to focus attention and resources on suicide prevention. The healthcare system announced the Zero Suicide initiative in June of 2018. Zero Suicide includes a commitment to preventing suicide, recognizing the role of each caregiver, and the goal of zero as the only acceptable number of suicides.

Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit system of 23 hospitals, 170 clinics, a Medical Group with about 2,300 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health plans group called SelectHealth, and other medical services. Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare through high quality and sustainable costs. For more information about Intermountain, visit www.intermountainhealthcare.org.

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