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Members of Pleasant Grove High School's Hope Squad encourage drivers to "Honk for Hope" on State Street in Pleasant Grove on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025.

Curtis Booker, Daily Herald

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Members of Pleasant Grove High School's Hope Squad hold signs inspiring hope and friendship during a conference at the school Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025.

Curtis Booker, Daily Herald

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Courtesy image

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Laura Giles

Courtesy Jeremy Hall

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The school year that recently ended marked an important milestone in suicide prevention. For 20 years, Hope4Utah has been helping to save lives, and it all began right here in Utah. What started as a suicide prevention program in one Utah County high school 20 years ago has spread to hundreds of schools nationwide and beyond the schools as well.

Dr. Greg Hudnall was an administrator in Provo School District, and, after much loss, felt the strong desire to do something. “As a school district, we were losing students to suicide every year,” Hudnall said. Then, in 1997, he was contacted by the Provo Police Department to identify a student who had died from suicide in a park next to his school. After that experience, Hudnall vowed to do everything he could to prevent another child from taking their life.

Hudnall said that in partnership with Brigham Young University, Wasatch Mental Health and Intermountain Health, they began investigating suicide prevention programs. “We learned that involving the students in the process was part of the solution. Young people talk with young people, they share their goals, their happiness and their challenges and fears. A friend who has been trained in suicide warning signs and what to do and when to go to an adult changed us from reaction to intervention,” Hudnall said.

That is when the Hope Squad program was born. In 2004, Timpview High School in Provo piloted the first Hope Squad. Members of the squad were trained to identify suicide warning signs in their peers and refer those peers to adults. After that first year, Hudnall worked to implement Hope Squads in every school in the Provo School District. During the next nine years, the number of suicides in the district dropped to zero.

Now, there are over 400 Hope Squads in both elementary and secondary schools in Utah alone, and over 2,000 Hope Squads in schools nationwide. Assistant Director Cathy Bledsoe has been part of the organization since the beginning. “Besides supporting the Hope Squad program in nearly 400 schools, Hope4Utah has offered suicide prevention, intervention and postvention training to organizations and communities throughout Utah,” she said.

Additionally, Hope4Utah has branched out to provide suicide prevention curriculum and programming to others as well, including senior centers, the military and corporations. Currently, the Utah County Jail is teaming up with Hope4Utah in piloting a suicide prevention program for inmates.

“We continue to be amazed at the success of the Hope Squad program. We know that the success is due to committed Hope Squad advisors and students. Over 200,000 young people have been trained in suicide prevention, learning warning signs and how to help a peer. Thousands of young people have been referred for help and many have been hospitalized. We know that lives have been saved,” Hudnall said. “I have traveled the world, and everywhere I go, I get to meet current or former Hope Squad members. We hug and they share their stories of helping peers. I am now in Hawaii creating a college-level Hope Squad with students from 70 different countries. Hope Squad is growing everywhere. Hope is our greatest future!”