Suicide Prevention Lifeline's Focus Is on Ensuring Capacity Once 988 Goes Live July 16

Facing the July 16 deadline for carriers and text providers to support routing 988 traffic to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, much of Lifeline's focus is making sure there's the capacity to handle that traffic, its administrator and its funder told an FCBA CLE Wednesday.

Lifeline is a network for local crisis centers in every state, with a national Spanish subnetwork and national call backup and national chat and text networks. Administrator Vibrant Emotional Health is using federal funding to ensure capacity at local levels, particularly through building out the national backups and subnetworks so there's robust capacity for the 9 million to 12 million contacts expected the first year, said Vibrant Director-National and State Policy Laura Evans.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which helps fund Lifeline, is trying to scale up the administrative, centralized and backup Lifeline operations, said James Wright, crisis center operations chief. He said it's also handing out funding to states and territories, such as a grant program for state 988 administrators contracting with local call centers, he said. Most of the $105 million allocated in FY 2022 went to workforce support for local crisis centers, he said. Now SAMHSA is starting to evaluate where states are, he said. The agency's goal is for more than 90% of calls to be answered in the state or territory in which they originated, he said.

The FCC hosted a forum in May to discuss hurdles to implementing geolocation of 988 calls. Wireline Bureau lawyer Emily Caditz said the agency is considering recommendations for next steps. She said the agency is gearing up to gather information from states, territories and tribal governments for a 988 fee report that has an Oct. 17 deadline under the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act. She said 35 states have introduced or passed legislation to support 988, with four states -- Washington, Nevada, Colorado and Virginia -- so far passing bills to enact a 988 fee on customers' phone bills. Numerous carriers have implemented 988 routing already, she said.

Mel Maier, APCO chief technology officer, said the group is considering how to develop national standards for 988. He said there's a public safety communications concern that 988 funding not come at the expense of funding 911. There needs to be separate funding streams for 911 and 988, Evans added.

Verizon had its wireless voice call implementation done in December 2020, though it has been telling customers to use the 1-800 number in the interim, said Assistant General Counsel Robert Morse. He said wireless text messaging is on track, and the capability is ready for end-to-end testing. Verizon's wireline work is on track for completion by July 16, he said. Wireline networks have been the biggest challenge due to the reprogramming and updating of legacy switches that are needed, he said.

988 "is ideally how an FCC rulemaking should work," with clear direction from Congress in its 2018 legislation not locking the FCC or industry into one code or call-routing approach, Morse said. The FCC getting input from its North American Numbering Council put an early focus on technical issues and ultimately made for a less adversarial rulemaking process than the agency often sees, he said.