Cathy Barber

senior esearcher, Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Research Center

Catherine Barber, MPA, is a senior researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Research Center where she led the effort to design and test the pilot for the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System. Her expertise is in designing and evaluating injury surveillance systems and using their data for prevention. She is the founding director of Means Matter, a project to disseminate research and interventions aimed at reducing a suicidal person’s access to highly lethal suicide methods. Barber was the lead author with Elaine Frank on the original CALM-Online (Counseling on Access to Lethal Means), produced with SPRC, and she was one of the originators of the Gun Shop Project, a novel approach to bringing firearm retailers, instructors, and other firearm stakeholders into the suicide prevention field. She is the recipient of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Allies in Action Lifetime Achievement Award.