Today, Governor Doug Ducey signed HB 2488, legislation sponsored by Representative Jay Lawrence, directing the Arizona Department of Health Services to submit an annual report improving the tracking of veteran suicides in Arizona. Officials say veterans face a risk of suicide four times greater than non-veterans in Arizona. Until now, the state did not have a formal way to track or report veteran suicides in the state. The new annual report will provide critical data to help understand and prevent veteran suicide. The report will begin in January 2020 and will track a variety of data points that will provide historical and regional trends and compare Arizona’s resident veteran suicide rate to the national rate and other regions across the country.
