Sponsors (8)
The bill directs modest federal funding and creates evidence-based training, counseling, device distribution, and centralized guidance to reduce suicide risk—especially among youth—while trading off increased federal spending, limited program scale, administrative burdens, and privacy/ political concerns that may limit reach and uptake.
Health care providers, students, and trainees will receive standardized, evidence-based suicide screening and lethal-means-safety training, improving earlier identification and clinical care for people at risk and likely reducing suicide attempts and deaths.
Covered individuals and households (including families with children and people with disabilities) can gain access to reduced- or no-cost secure gun storage devices and counseling on safe storage, lowering immediate access to lethal means in at-risk homes.
The bill provides federal funding and technical assistance (authorized amounts across sections) to help states, schools, nonprofits, and clinical programs adopt suicide-prevention curricula and supports, reducing financial barriers to implementation.
Taxpayers will fund the authorized programs (roughly $30M across sections plus ongoing administrative and website maintenance costs), increasing federal spending with limited-term authorizations and potential recurring administrative costs.
Households, patients, and protected groups may face privacy, stigma, or political concerns from counseling about firearms, public reporting of grantee activities, and enumerating risk factors (including protected identities), which could deter participation or lead to misuse of information.
A statutory cap allowing only up to 15% of funds to purchase storage devices limits the scale of hardware distribution, so some high-need households may not receive devices despite program availability.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes HHS grants to expand youth suicide-prevention practices in health care, integrate training into health curricula, create a public resource site, and permit limited funding for secure gun storage.
Official title: Authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to establish or expand programs to implement evidence-aligned practices in health care settings for the purpose of reducing the suicide rates of covered individuals, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 25, 2026 by Brian Emanuel Schatz · Last progress March 25, 2026
Provides HHS grants and resources to reduce suicide among people under 26 by expanding evidence-aligned suicide prevention practices in health care settings, integrating suicide-prevention and lethal-means-safety training into health professional education, and creating a public website on best practices and firearm-related suicide prevention. Authorizes a total of $30 million (FY2027–FY2030) for the two grant programs, requires annual public reporting by grantees through FY2030, and directs HHS to submit a summary report with implementation recommendations to Congress by the end of FY2030.