Supporting Suicide Prevention with County-Level Data and Analytics

The Helpline Center is a South Dakota-based organization that was established in 1974. Its mission has been to provide 211 and 988 suicide hotline services for South Dakotans, making sure that the state can have meaningful services toward suicide prevention. It provides 24-hour service and helps over 100,000 people every year.

For North Dakota and some regions of Minnesota, suicide hotlines are serviced by FirstLink. FirstLink provides a free, confidential service that answers 211 and 988 calls to further its mission of combating suicide. In 2024, FirstLink would engage in nearly 80,000 contacts with callers.

The Dakota Institute contributed to the respective missions of the Helpline Center and FirstLink by developing a dashboard of relevant data for the systems and their respective operations. This data will highlight where callers are coming from (from the county level down to zip code), quantifying what necessities have not been met, and a daily timeline of when calls came in.

This data provides a sense of what resources are needed to forward these respective organizations’ missions of suicide prevention. You can view The Helpline Center’s 211 data dashboard to learn more about how The Helpline Center serves South Dakotans everyday, for example 29,106 people contacted 211 for help with housing needs during 2024. You can also view the 988 Data Dashboard about The Helpline Center’s suicide prevention services. FirstLink’s data dashboard shows that nearly 38,000 of their contacts came from Cass County, North Dakota.

Compiling these data points into one place will allow for these organizations to provide demonstrable proof that their efforts are making a difference. By being able to tell a story, these groups will be better equipped to apply for grants and seek institutional support. From these dashboards, these organizations have been better able to mobilize their resources to combat the mental health crises in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Dakota Institute developed these data dashboards using Tableau Public so that The Helpline Center and Firstlink could fully take them over and manage them going forward. This strategy saved money and allowed both organizations to preserve their funding to support their important work.