KVC encourages ongoing training to support our teams in providing high-quality, evidence-based services to their clients.

“Nearly every person in this world has been touched by suicide in some way.”

Dr. Megan Moore sees this reality every day. As the Senior Director of Innovation and Impact with KVC Behavioral HealthCare Kentucky, a subsidiary of KVC Health Systems, she’s worked tirelessly alongside her 2,800 colleagues across 65 locations in five states to eradicate suicide, which takes about 50,000 lives in the U.S. each year.

Moore knew that achieving this ambitious goal wouldn’t be possible overnight. But by equipping clinicians with the competence and confidence to deliver timely, individualized care, including treating the drivers of each patient’s suicidal ideation, KVC could strengthen its approach to suicide prevention and save more lives.

In 2024, together with Chad Anderson, LSCSW, KVC’s Chief Clinical Officer based in Kansas, who brought deep clinical expertise and system-wide leadership, they integrated the evidence-based Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) framework into their system of care. With an engaged cohort of leaders and clinicians, private philanthropic funding, and a collaborative partnership with CAMS-care, the KVC team moved from concept to implementation in just four months.

KVC’s early results of clinician engagement and patient outcomes are incredibly exciting. Their practical six-step approach offers a replicable blueprint for other mental health organizations with limited time and resources to similarly strengthen their suicide prevention practices and join us in advancing a world without suicide.

Connection as the Foundation for Saving Lives

At the heart of both KVC and CAMS is the shared belief that connection saves lives. Connection is what fosters health and healing. In suicide prevention, connection is especially critical, both in terms of a patient’s relation to family and community and ensuring a coordinated approach to services. When a person who is suicidal has access to timely, individualized, and connected care at the ideation stage, we can minimize the risk of ideation becoming behavior. Fewer attempts mean fewer deaths and lower health system costs.

At KVC, connection is ingrained across its entire system of care. Through their Safe and Connected™ practice model, they support families and communities with high-quality mental health and family-strengthening services spanning the continuum of care from in-home to inpatient treatment. Access to healthcare (both physical and mental) and community support is limited in rural areas. In the past two decades, suicide rates have increased 46% in non-metro areas (compared to 27.3% in metro areas). Many of KVC’s locations are in rural communities to meet this growing need for services, often providing in-home treatment and wraparound support, where access to services can be limited, and transportation is a barrier for those who need it most.

CAMS is an evidence-based, suicide-focused framework that operationalizes this approach to suicide prevention. Dr. Mariam Gregorian, CAMS Consultant, explains, “The CAMS Framework® is the most effective treatment for the largest population — the 16.9 million Americans who experience serious thoughts of suicide each year.” Through its collaborative, flexible process, clinicians and patients jointly identify and treat the personal drivers of suicidality as early as possible. It also serves as an umbrella framework that integrates seamlessly into existing models of care, strengthening what clinicians are already doing while aligning teams around a shared, proactive prevention strategy.

The natural synergy between KVC’s connection-first culture and CAMS’ focus on proactively and collaboratively treating suicidal drivers planted the seeds for change.

Discovering CAMS to Treat Suicidal Drivers

KVC’s first exposure to CAMS happened in the early 2000s. Megan Moore met Dr. Melinda Moore, CAMS Consultant, suicide loss survivor, and professor at Eastern Kentucky University, at a training hosted by her agency in Lexington, KY. What Megan Moore learned about CAMS changed the way she thought about suicide. She no longer saw suicide as a symptom of depression, but as the specific focus of care.

Moore and Anderson were curious to learn more about CAMS and its potential to strengthen KVC’s approach to suicide prevention. They also wanted to bring in other members of their clinical leadership team for their feedback. Through both virtual and in-person conversations, Gregorian helped them understand their options and their advantages in a systemic way.

After previewing some of the CAMS training products, the KVC team became determined to integrate CAMS as an evidence-based practice into their system of care. Because no two patients are alike and insurance policies vary by state, Anderson envisioned adding CAMS as another tool in clinicians’ toolkits. Anderson recalls, “We saw how CAMS saves lives. Why wouldn’t we invest in it?”

Implementing CAMS into KVC’s System of Care

Moore and Anderson approached this process with thoughtfulness and intentionality to minimize resources and maximize impact. Here are the six steps that took them from planning to implementation.

Step 1: Identify and Empower Champions

Every system-wide change needs a strong leader behind it. For KVC, that was Moore and Anderson. They’re both visionaries with a deep understanding of both clinical practice and implementation science. They built momentum, provided ongoing support and communication, and kept their teams informed and engaged from pilot toimplementation.

Step 2: Establish a Pilot Group

In January 2024, KVC launched a small, multidisciplinary pilot group. It consisted of approximately 32 clinicians and senior business leaders from its six subsidiaries: KVC Kansas, KVC Kentucky, KVC Missouri, KVC Nebraska, KVC West Virginia, and Camber Mental Health, KVC’s network of inpatient mental health hospitals and residential treatment centers.

Anderson describes, “We were all in it together.” Energy and engagement levels were high. The cohort established regular touch points and met consistently for 12 months. During this time, they received monthly consultation calls, peer support, and case review. Leadership actively participated alongside clinicians, ensuring they stayed in lock step throughout the process.

Step 3: Secure Funding

To begin the CAMS training process, KVC needed funding. Each of the six nonprofit subsidiaries operates independently, so each led respective efforts to secure funding. They focused their efforts on reaching out to existing networks, with support from their KVC Foundation team.

As a result of their outreach, an anonymous private funder awarded $25,000 to fund the CAMS pilot program to include 32 clinicians and trainers across the health system. The donor asked that KVC also use their gift to attract additional funders to support more clinicians and trainers beyond the pilot. While additional funding would be needed to scale, this first seed funding established a proof of concept to begin the CAMS training process.

Step 4: Conduct CAMS Trainings

In February 2024, 32 clinicians and clinical leaders participated and completed the CAMS Trained™ program.Throughout the program’s 10 hours of online coursework and 4 hours of consultation calls, KVC clinicians worked closely with Dr. Gregorian, Dr. Melinda Moore, and the entire CAMS team to gain direct skills, knowledge, and confidence to effectively assess and treat suicidal patients. This pilot group also completed role-play training and the CAMS-4Teens® training to learn how to work with adolescents and their parents/caregivers.

Moore, Anderson, and other cohort leaders stayed closely engaged throughout the training to ensure everyone continued to feel informed and empowered. Gregorian also remained involved to support the clinicians through consultation calls and answering questions as they arose.

Step 5: Put CAMS into Practice

The key to implementation would come from giving clinicians the opportunity to apply CAMS in practice and build their confidence.

In April 2024, 10-15 clinicians began utilizing CAMS with patients. This phased approach allowed the team to focus first on successful uptake of the model, ensuring clinicians felt supported as they navigated suicide-specific conversations and interventions using a new framework. Moore reconnected with Dr. Melinda Moore, the CAMS-care Consultant who hosted the role-play training and consultation calls for the cohort.

Step 6: Scale Across the System of Care

After the initial CAMS training and implementation with 32 clinicians across the health system, KVC continued seeking funding to scale the model.

KVC Kansas secured a new $35,000 grant from the state to train 40 more clinicians in CAMS and the team began to identify and create a plan.

Camber Mental Health, KVC’s team of inpatient and residential psychiatric treatment experts, budgeted $18,000 to train 12 therapists in CAMS (3 per campus). They plan to seek state funding to train the remainder of their clinicians in CAMS.

In 2025, the State of Kansas made a second gift of $35,000 to train staff in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), to treat the drivers identified in the CAMS Framework and strengthen treatment for youth experiencing foster care.

The Kentucky team also found local partners who wanted to invest in suicide prevention in the community. In May 2025, Lexington, KY-based Valvoline, a national leader in automotive maintenance, partnered with KVC Kentucky by contributing funding to train 53 clinicians in CAMS.. Valvoline’s donation also provided long-term sustainability of the model, funding three licensed practitioners to become CAMS trainers.

In total, in just under two years, KVC has trained 100 clinicians in CAMS across three subsidiaries. Their goal is to train all 450 clinicians nationwide.

While all six of KVC’s local teams have recognized the benefits and plan to implement CAMS, their timelines have varied based on their ability to secure funding. KVC’s teams in Missouri, Nebraska and West Virginia are still in the process of seeking funding to begin training.

Leaning On Each Other to Save Lives

Implementing new and different modalities into your system of care takes work. It takes resources — time, money, and effort. For mental health organizations, many of whom are already stretched thin, implementing something new may feel overwhelming and complicated. Our hope is that this guide can provide a practical model for replicating KVC’s successful implementation through its dedicated leadership, efficient resource use, and collaborative partnership with CAMS.

One of the key components to strengthening your system of care is, of course, funding. Government grants used to be a primary source of funding for mental health services. But recent uncertainty emphasizes the importance of diversifying your pipeline so people can receive the right life-saving support at the right time.

Private philanthropic funding is a critical and effective source. Where to search for it may not be obvious at first. But sometimes we find it in the most unexpected and creative places— like the initial private funder who provided KVC with $25,000 to kickstart training or Valvoline’s larger partnership to save lives.

Anderson shares, “Anyone can do this. It’s not too expensive. It’s not out of reach. But you don’t need to do it alone. Lean on us. Take what KVC has learned and achieved as an organization, and do it even better.”

Please reach out to the CAMS-care team here to learn more. Connecting with you to help you strengthen your system of care is why we’re here.

We are made to live in connection with others. Together, we are committed to creating a world without suicide.

LEARN MORE: KVC Health Systems Funding Proposal Template