Breanna Banks, PhD, MA

Bre Banks, PhD, MA is a suicidologist and behavioral health scientist whose work focuses on suicide prevention, clinical education in behavioral health, and the integration of lived experience into clinical care. Her interdisciplinary research spans the development, implementation, and evaluation of novel suicide crisis interventions, with particular emphasis on provider training, peer support, and care transitions for persons at high risk for suicide. She is a co-developer of THRIVE, a brief recovery-focused intervention designed for use in high-acuity behavioral health settings, and co-leads several studies on the implementation and outcomes of THRIVE through funding supported by the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Her work is grounded in implementation science and translational research, and she has led research and program evaluations for large-scale federal suicide prevention initiatives totaling over $30 million in federal funding. She has extensive experience training interdisciplinary behavioral health teams, including peers, crisis counselors, and licensed clinicians, and led the development and implementation of the nation’s first community behavioral health simulation training center. Dr. Banks also serves as a suicide prevention scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center within the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences. She earned her PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Tennessee, MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Argosy University, and BA from the University of Tennessee.

She teaches graduate-level courses in the MPH and DPH programs at Tulane.