About

John R. Blosnich is an associate professor and director of the Center for LGBTQ+ Health Equity at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. His primary area of expertise is disparities in suicide risk and prevention among high-risk populations, with a specific emphasis on social determinants of health. Prior to joining USC, Blosnich spent nine years working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he led foundational research on transgender veterans’ health and healthcare utilization, focusing on suicide risk, mortality, and social determinants. He has garnered awards including the VA’s first research award focused on transgender veterans and has served on national VA committees developing guidance, clinical education, and training for high-risk veteran subgroups. His research also addresses the lack of sexual orientation and gender identity data in mortality surveillance, and he is a 2021 NIH New Innovator Award recipient, leading research into non-clinical suicide prevention in partnership with community-based professionals. His work aims to move research from prevalence to prevention, particularly among sexual and gender minority populations.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Clinical psychology
• Environmental health
• Psychology
• Internal medicine
• Psychotherapist
• Demography
• Psychiatry
• Gerontology
• Philosophy
• Pathology
• Medical emergency
• Theology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• The association between residential relocation and mortality among Veterans with experience of housing instability in rural areas

  The Journal of Rural Health · 2026-03-01

  articleSenior author

  PURPOSE: Housing instability deleteriously affects health outcomes (i.e., lack of access to care, premature mortality). Veterans experiencing housing instability in rural areas-which often lack housing options, transportation, and services-have greater odds of residential relocation compared to urban Veterans, and they most frequently relocate to urban areas. Urban relocation is associated with changes in health outcomes, including increased services use, but studies have not examined the association between residential relocation and mortality. METHODS: This study used Veterans Affairs electronic health record data for 28,058 Veterans who experienced housing instability at a rural residence and then, within 2 years, changed their residential location by ≥40 mi or from a rural-to-urban location. We assessed the risk of mortality during the 6 months following residential relocation, controlling for sociodemographics, baseline comorbid health conditions, and time-varying services use. FINDINGS: One-third of the rural Veterans experiencing housing instability had a rural-to-rural relocation (n = 7227), whereas the remaining had a rural-to-urban relocation (n = 17,375). Veterans with a rural-to-rural relocation were older and had more comorbid medical conditions compared to Veterans with rural-to-urban relocation; however, Veterans with a rural-to-urban relocation had 28% greater odds of mortality during the 6 months following residential relocation than Veterans with rural-to-rural relocation. CONCLUSIONS: Rural-to-rural relocation was associated with reduced odds of mortality, even when controlling for services utilization, age, and baseline comorbidities. Future research should explore if and how remaining in rural environments is protective and identify ways to support care coordination following residential relocations among Veterans with experience of housing instability.

  PublisherDOI

• Sexual and gender minorities and psychosis research

  Schizophrenia Research · 2026-04-03

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Social determinants of health associated with initiation of evidence-based psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in a national sample of veterans

  Journal of Behavioral Medicine · 2026-03-22

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distress signal: Self-storage facilities as sentinel spaces for community stress and mental health

  Wellbeing Space and Society · 2026-02-11

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Age differences in the association between services to address housing instability and suicide mortality among Veterans

  Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless · 2026-02-05

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Adolescence into adulthood: religiosity factors influencing trajectories of suicide ideation and attempt among sexual minorities

  Mental Health Religion & Culture · 2025-04-21

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study utilized three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine patterns of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and changes in religiosity from adolescence into young adulthood between sexual minority and heterosexual individuals. Repeated measure latent class analysis revealed sexual minority participants were more likely to be in the "high adolescent/lower adult risk" and "moderate- to high-risk across ages" classes compared to heterosexual participants. Sexual minority participants were more likely than heterosexuals to be in the low religiosity trajectory at Wave 1 and remained less religious than heterosexual participants. Interactions among sexual identity, religiosity, and suicidality trajectories were not statistically significant. Findings suggest there may not be direct sexual orientation-related differences in longitudinal trends of religiosity and suicidality from adolescence into young adulthood. Future research should explore indirect paths as well as examine religiosity at earlier ages.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Seasonal and sociodemographic factors associated with farmer suicide: National violent death reporting system 2014–2021.

  Rural Mental Health · 2025-04-21

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Farmers are disproportionately affected by suicide, necessitating culturally appropriate interventions. This analysis sought to identify factors related to suicides among United States farmers and farm workers from 2014-2021 and examine seasonality trends compared to those in the general population. Data from the National Violent Death Resources System (NVDRS) Restricted Access Database were used. Bivariate statistics and logistic regression investigated correlates (month, meteorological season, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, education level, stressors, and age) predicting farmer versus nonfarmer suicides. After filtering occupation codes and death dates, 3,410 farming and 207,501 nonfarming individuals were included. In unadjusted models, farmer decedents were significantly more likely than nonfarmers to be older, male, White, and married or in a domestic partnership or civil union, with lower educational attainment. Spring and summer showed the highest prevalence of suicide among both groups. In unadjusted models, farmers were significantly more likely to have experienced a physical health problem but not more likely than nonfarmers to have experienced a financial stressor. In adjusted models, meteorological season, month of death, and physical or financial problems were not significant predictors for farmer versus nonfarmer suicide, but age, race, marital status, sex, and education level were. The peak of suicides in warmer seasons and socio-demographic differences are consistent with previous findings. Financial stressors were no different than those of the general population, suggesting farmers require coping strategies beyond financial ones. The findings provide implications for future research and public health interventions aimed at reducing farmer suicide, especially the timing.

  PublisherDOI

• Binge Drinking, Cannabis, and Tobacco Use and Modifiable Social Risks Among Adults Who Used Health Care

  Journal of General Internal Medicine · 2025-11-17

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Screening for certain types of substance use is common in health care. Screening for social risks-modifiable social conditions affecting health-is less common. Understanding how binge drinking, cannabis use, and tobacco use co-occur with social risks could inform interventions targeting these factors simultaneously. OBJECTIVE: Examine the relationship between binge drinking, tobacco, and cannabis use and social risks among US health care users. DESIGN: Retrospective population-based cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS: Adults from 15 US states or territories who participated in the 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey and had a health care visit in the past 2 years (N = 76,891). MAIN MEASURES: Social risks included employment loss/reduction, receipt of food stamps, difficulty paying for food, inability to pay bills, threat of utility shutoff, and lack of reliable transportation. Exposures were the presence and frequency of past-month binge drinking, cannabis use, or nicotine product use. We assessed rates of modifiable social risks by substance use variables and calculated marginal effects adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and education. KEY RESULTS: Overall, 30.9% reported at least one social risk. Difficulty paying for food was the most common (12.4%). The adjusted prevalence of having any social risks was elevated among individuals with past-month cannabis or tobacco use (e.g., 42.1% and 42.6%, respectively), but not among those with past-month binge drinking (29.3%). However, individuals with daily binge drinking, cannabis use, or tobacco use had substantially increased social risks. The probability of experiencing social risks increased with the number of substances used. LIMITATIONS: A cross-sectional survey. CONCLUSIONS: Cannabis and tobacco may signal underlying social risks, even at low frequency. Binge drinking was associated with social risks only when it occurred daily. Future research should determine whether addressing substance use can reduce social risks, and vice versa, within integrated health care services.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Uncovering Intervention Opportunities for Suicide Prevention with Language Model Assistants

  ArXiv.org · 2025-08-25

  preprintOpen access

  Warning: This paper discusses topics of suicide and suicidal ideation, which may be distressing to some readers. The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) documents information about suicides in the United States, including free text narratives (e.g., circumstances surrounding a suicide). In a demanding public health data pipeline, annotators manually extract structured information from death investigation records following extensive guidelines developed painstakingly by experts. In this work, we facilitate data-driven insights from the NVDRS data to support the development of novel suicide interventions by investigating the value of language models (LMs) as efficient assistants to these (a) data annotators and (b) experts. We find that LM predictions match existing data annotations about 85% of the time across 50 NVDRS variables. In the cases where the LM disagrees with existing annotations, expert review reveals that LM assistants can surface annotation discrepancies 38% of the time. Finally, we introduce a human-in-the-loop algorithm to assist experts in efficiently building and refining guidelines for annotating new variables by allowing them to focus only on providing feedback for incorrect LM predictions. We apply our algorithm to a real-world case study for a new variable that characterizes victim interactions with lawyers and demonstrate that it achieves comparable annotation quality with a laborious manual approach. Our findings provide evidence that LMs can serve as effective assistants to public health researchers who handle sensitive data in high-stakes scenarios.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring Bankruptcy Attorneys' Experiences With Clients Exhibiting Suicidality: Challenges and Recommendations for Suicide Prevention

  Behavioral Sciences & the Law · 2025-12-22

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Bankruptcy and financial distress commonly precipitate suicidal crises, putting bankruptcy attorneys in potentially difficult situations with clients. This qualitative study explored attorneys' experiences with clients' risk for suicide and attorneys' recommendations for suicide prevention. Bankruptcy attorneys and trustees (n = 11) were recruited via outreach to attorney groups (e.g., National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys). Semi-structured interviews explored clients' distress, responses to clients' suicidal disclosures, and previous suicide prevention training. The research team established a codebook from transcribed interviews within Dedoose software, using peer debriefing and consensus building to iteratively identify themes. Nearly all attorneys had experiences with clients discussing suicide, but most did not know how to intervene. Common themes included clients' co-occurring stressors (e.g., divorce, unemployment), destigmatizing the bankruptcy process, and navigating attorney-client privilege. Major themes for prevention were correcting misconceptions about and destigmatizing bankruptcy and suicide prevention training that is sensitive to the context of the legal profession.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Patterns of Alcohol Use and Alcohol-Related Care Among Transgender Persons

  NIH · $438k · 2018–2021

• Health Outcomes and Healthcare Use Among Transgender Veterans

  NIH · 2016–2021

• Shifting Suicide Prevention Paradigms: Looking Beyond Clinical Settings

  NIH · $2.4M · 2021–2026

• NIH Grant R36DA030589

  NIH · $40k · 2011

Frequent coauthors

• Jillian C. Shipherd

  Boston University

  189 shared

• Michael R. Kauth

  Baylor College of Medicine

  141 shared

• Ann Elizabeth Montgomery

  University of Alabama at Birmingham

  94 shared

• Adam J. Gordon

  VA Portland Health Care System

  82 shared

• Dawne Vogt

  VA Boston Healthcare System

  60 shared

• Robert M. Bossarte

  University of South Florida

  59 shared

• Melissa E. Dichter

  Temple University

  58 shared

• Emily C. Williams

  VA Puget Sound Health Care System

  56 shared

Labs

• Center for LGBTQ+ Health Equity at USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social WorkPI

Awards & honors

• 2024, Monica Helms & Angela B. Sheedy Transgender and Gender…
• 2018, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs I CARE Award for O…
• 2017, Federal Executive Board Silver Award for Outstanding C…