Knowing risk and protective factors for youth suicidal behavior and understanding how they function is critical to preventing suicide. While clinicians use these factors to assess individual patient risk, prevention practitioners use them to choose groups of youth to focus interventions on, such as youth who have attempted suicide or youth in foster care. Interventions can also be designed to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors across groups of youth. This workshop will define risk and protective factors for suicidal behavior, identify the most important factors, and describe how prevention practitioners can use these factors to develop interventions.