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25
Posted by benniefinch on August 25th, 2025
Posted in: Blog, Funded Project, NLM Resources, Webinars, Weekly Newsletter
Tags: Funded Projects, Member Spotlight, mental health, public libraries
In early August, we had the opportunity to hear from 3 amazing women about their work in support of grief awareness and suicide prevention. You can find the recording on the Region 7 Playlist on the NNLM YouTube Channel.
Anne Romano, Bennie Finch, Kathleen Shine-O’Brien, Kimberly Mead-Walters, Margot Malachowski
Dr. Kimberly Mead-Walters and Kathleen Shine-O’Brien discussed the work of Sharing Kindness and their NNLM funded project, Grief 101: Improving Grief Literacy in our Community. During the panel presentation, they discussed the bereavement gap including a lack of support for grieving people and how our communities are often unprepared to support one another. Sharing Kindness’ mission is to build a grief sensitive and suicide aware Cape and Islands community. They offer evidence-based peer to peer youth suicide prevention in 14 middle and high schools, and they provide clinician-led peer grief support across the lifespan.
With NNLM funding, Sharing Kindness developed the Grief Literacy 101 curriculum in partnership with public librarians. Together they developed a presentation, curated a children’s grief book pack and resources on their website, as well as care cards and bookmarks for distribution in libraries. The programming, presented in 11 libraries on the Cape and Islands and scheduled for more libraries in the fall (with supplemental financial support), offers an introduction to what grief is and how to support those in our lives experiencing grief. They also discussed the importance of addressing grief, especially for children and youth.
From a note from one of the attendees “Grief 101 is suicide prevention: knowing how to support someone during their darkest times can save lives.”
Sharing Kindness is being approached by healthcare and social service organizations to provide grief sensitivity training for their staff.
They are also receiving requests from schools. They developed a school-based version of Grief 101 for teachers, staff, and administrators. This prepares the school prior to offering 6-week sessions with students, allowing the school to know how to support bereaved students.
“Start the conversation” is the Sharing Kindness tagline – their work is creating sustainable change in how community members support one another.
Anne Romano is a hospital librarian at Silver Hill Hospital and board member of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).
Anne talked about different types of loss and grief and how she supports staff, patients and families with resources, from websites to books to podcasts and more. Anne presented resources such as MedlinePlus, PubMed (including MeSH terms), NIH resources, SAMHSA, NAMI, 988, AFSP, QPR Training (Question. Persuade. Refer.), the Connecticut Clearinghouse and more. She also discussed the importance of breaking the stigma of mental health through awareness events.
Anne shared a variety of library programming opportunities and examples from collection development suggestions and book displays for specific awareness events to speaker events and training for library staff or the public.
Anne also discussed her NNLM Collection Development Award last year on the topics of Loneliness and Isolation. She offered book club options for staff and patients and will be reaching out to local public libraries.
Other examples shared for potential library programming:
The presenters shared about the different types of expertise that came together to develop training, curate book packs, and support library patrons. They also shared about the importance of libraries as safe spaces where people from the community feel comfortable gathering for presentations and connection. They shared their observations that librarians knew their patrons and worked together to consider the audience and how best to meet their needs such as planning when to hold activities. All three panelists recognized the importance of public libraries as resources in communities.
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