Posted: September 10, 2012 - 1:30 pm ET - ModernHealthcare.com

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius marked World Suicide Prevention Day on Monday by announcing an ambitious new national suicide-prevention strategy and about $56 million in new grants for national, state, tribal, campus and community suicide-prevention programs.

The grant funding comes primarily through the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Actâ€"named for former Sen. Gordon Smith's (R-Ore.) son who committed suicide in September 2003â€"and partially from the 2010 healthcare law's Prevention and Public Health Fund.

Sebelius joined private-sector business leaders, including Marne Levine, vice president of public policy for Facebook, and federal officials, including U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin, at a news conference in Washington to release the 2012 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (PDF). Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher released the first National Strategy for Suicide Prevention in 2001.

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Two years ago today, Sebelius and then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, or “Action Alliance,” that called for a national strategy to help reduce suicide, the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. Monday's report from the Action Alliance and the U.S. surgeon general aims to do that through its 13 goals and 60 objectives over the next 10 years.

“In the 1990s, we saw a slow but steady decline in the number of Americans lost to suicide. But since then, suicide rates have begun to rise again,” Sebelius said at the National Press Club in Washington. “Today, suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24. And we've seen especially alarming trends in our armed forces. Just this July, the Army lost 38 soldiers to suicide, an all-time, one-month high.”

The strategy's goals and objectives fall into four main areas: create supportive environments that promote healthy and empowered individuals, families and communities; enhance clinical and community preventive services; promote the availability of timely treatment and support services; and improve suicide prevention surveillance collection, research and evaluation.

“We want to make sure suicide prevention is part of our broader efforts to improve healthcare across America,” Sebelius said in her remarks. “For example, a couple of weeks ago, the CMS announced new standards that doctors will have to meet to earn certain incentive payments. We made sure that providing people who have major depression with suicide-risk assessment was included as one of those standards.”