Janet Kemp, a nurse with over 20 years’ experience with the Department
of Veterans Affairs (The Veterans Administration, or “V.A.”, for those of us old enough to remember Watergate or television without cable) set up the Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline – in July 2007, which is credited with preventing 5,000 suicides.
Kemp said she regretted that the 500 employees working full time on suicide prevention could not share the award with her.
“It’s humbling,” she said. “It doesn’t happen by yourself. Nothing you do in the government you do alone.”
Steve Vogel’s piece in this morning’s Washington Post – Head of Suicide Prevention Program Gets Top Honor Among Those Recognized for Service also covers awards to other federal employees whose work is worth mentioning in this space
The Citizen Services Medal was awarded to Michael German, national team leader at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who created state and local agency partnerships that are credited with contributing to a 30 percent reduction in long-term homelessness.
Don Burke and Sean P. Dennehy of the Central Intelligence Agency together were awarded the Homeland Security Medal for their work promoting “Intellipedia,” a Wikipedia-like repository of intelligence meant to improve information sharing across the intelligence community.
The Environment Medal went to Allan Comp, a program analyst in the Office of Surface Mining at the Department of Interior, for building a network of volunteers to assist Appalachian coal country communities and to address environmental problems in the West’s hard-rock mining region.
Thanks to the Washington Post
for covering this.