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The purpose of this paper is to propose that black churches in the USA are best suited to curtail the rising incidence of suicide, and suicide ideation among African-American adolescents. Presently, little is known about the best preventive practices and mental healthcare interventions for the black adolescents assailed by suicide and suicidal ideation.

A review of the extant literature was conducted to understand and synthesize the current knowledge base about suicide rates among African-American adolescents. To retrieve and review relevant literature that focussed on suicide among African-American adolescents and the preventive roles of black churches the authors searched the following databases: PsychINFO, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Social Work abstracts, and Google Scholar.

Findings indicate that black churches could implement, and profusely replicate the lay health advisors and HAVEN models to successfully mitigate the rate of suicide among black adolescents. In addition it was found that the gatekeeper suicide prevention program model also holds promise for suicide prevention among black adolescents in black churches.

The result of this research synthesize is limited to African-American adolescents and may not be generalizable to other minority adolescents’ experiencing suicidal challenges. Furthermore, future research should utilize qualitative research methodologies to document lived experiences of African-American adolescents who are survivors of suicide attempts with a view to preventing suicide and suicidal ideation among black adolescents.

Healthcare professionals, and policy makers, are provided a panoramic view of culturally competent and spiritually sensitive prevention interventions within black churches that are most appropriate for reducing suicide rates among minority black adolescents.

Inter-organisational collaboration (IOC) across healthcare settings has been put forward as a solution to mounting financial and sustainability challenges. Whilst ingredients for successful IOC have been explored, there remains limited understanding of the development of IOCs over time.

The authors systematically reviewed the literature to identify models applied to IOCs in healthcare across databases such as Healthcare Management Information Consortium (HMIC) and MEDLINE, identifying 2,763 titles and abstracts with 26 final papers included. The authors then used a “best fit” framework synthesis methodology to synthesise fourteen models of IOC in healthcare and the wider public sector to formulate an applied composite model describing the process through which collaborations change over time. This synthesis comprised extracting stages and behaviours from included models, selecting an a priori framework upon which to code these stages and behaviours and then re-coding them to construct a new composite model.

Existing models often did not consider that organisations may undergo many IOCs in the organisations' lifetime nor included “contemplation” stages or those analogous to “dissolution”, which might negatively impact papers using such models. The formulated' composite model utilises a life-cycle design comprising five non-linear phases, namely Contemplating, Connecting, Planning, Implementation and Maintenance or Dissolution and incorporates dynamic elements from Complex Adaptive Systems thinking to reflect the dynamic nature of collaborations.

This is the first purpose-built model of the lifecycles of IOCs in healthcare. The model is intended to inform implementers, evaluators and researchers of IOCs alike.