Sullivant Lab
About the Team
The Sullivant Lab focuses on identification and reduction of suicide risk among youth. While suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth, it is a preventable cause of death, and our goal is to develop and disseminate effective strategies for reducing these deaths.
Early work in our lab centered on suicide risk screening, with an emphasis on early identification of youth seen for healthcare visits who may be at elevated risk for suicide. Our recent focus has been on implementing and studying one of the most evidence-based suicide prevention interventions: means restriction, otherwise known as safe storage. Our lab has developed a specific program, called “Prepped and Ready: Parenting into the Teen Years,” to help empower and equip caregivers to manage teen health and safety issues that commonly emerge in the context of parenting teenagers, with an emphasis on teen suicide prevention. The goal of this program of research is to make homes safer for children through actionable changes caregivers can make within their own homes. Our recent studies have iteratively evaluated variations in format (e.g., live versus in-person) and content to identify the most impactful intervention components.
Active Projects
Please click on the link(s) to learn more about our actively enrolling studies.
Leader
Shayla Sullivant, MD is the Chief of the Section of Psychiatry and a child and adolescent psychiatrist in the Division of Developmental & Behavioral Health. Dr. Sullivant completed undergraduate training at Creighton University and medical school at the University of Kansas, where she also completed a residency in adult psychiatry, and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry. Since 2010, she has been on staff at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, where she currently serves as an associate professor. In July 2019, Dr. Sullivant was the recipient of the Shining Star award for having the highest patient satisfaction ratings among the medical staff at Children’s Mercy. Dr. Sullivant co-leads the suicide prevention research group at Children’s Mercy and her current work focuses on providing education for parents on ways to reduce suicide risk for adolescents, including safe storage.
- Research Areas
- Labs and Research Teams
- ACCESS Behavioral Health Lab
- Baby Health and Behavior Lab
- Baby Lab
- Bactrim Lung Failure Team
- Behavioral Pain Innovations Lab
- Center for Children’s Healthy Lifestyles & Nutrition
- Community Engaged Research Team
- Developmental and Behavioral Health Research Group
- Fridley Lab
- Laboratory of Immunogenomics
- Milkovich Lab
- Nadler Lab
- Pediatric Brain Cancer Research Team/Yadav Lab
- Ramsey Lab
- Sullivant Lab
- Varberg Lab
- Younger Lab
Section Chief - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Division of Developmental and Behavioral Health; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, University of Kansas School of Medicine