Sponsors (9)
The bill aims to improve mental-health awareness, culturally competent outreach, and data-driven policy for Hispanic/Latino youth, but relies mainly on modest outreach funding and short-term studies, creating costs, privacy risks, and a high chance that immediate service expansion will be delayed.
Hispanic and Latino youth and their families will gain culturally and linguistically tailored mental-health information, outreach, and early-intervention referrals, increasing awareness of symptoms and where to get help.
Students and school staff will receive youth mental-health first aid training and on-site screening/partnership support, improving early identification and referrals for students in need.
Children and youth could see better-targeted suicide-prevention and crisis-response policies (including improvements to 9-8-8, mobile crisis teams, and crisis centers) informed by disaggregated data and recommendations.
Several provisions authorize studies rather than funding direct services, so affected youth are unlikely to see immediate new services or increases in provider availability.
Collecting and publishing disaggregated sensitive data (e.g., sexual orientation, gender identity, disability) about youth and providers raises privacy and confidentiality risks if protections are not rigorous.
The bill increases federal spending (about $25 million for the outreach campaign plus two $1M study authorizations), meaning taxpayers bear additional costs without guaranteed follow-on implementation funding.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Directs HHS to study Latino youth mental health, implement a culturally and linguistically competent national outreach campaign, study crisis service use, inventory Hispanic/Latino mental health providers, and authorizes funding.
Introduced November 20, 2025 by Andrea Salinas · Last progress November 20, 2025
Creates federally led work to improve mental health awareness, outreach, screening, and workforce capacity for Hispanic and Latino youth. It directs HHS to study past campaigns and current needs, run a culturally and linguistically competent national outreach campaign, study prevalence and crisis-service awareness, and inventory the Hispanic/Latino mental health workforce, with short timelines for reports and modest authorized funding. The bill requires coordinated actions across HHS, CDC, NIH, the Office of Minority Health, the Surgeon General, and Education and Labor officials, sets data-disaggregation rules, and authorizes about $27 million total over fiscal years 2026–2030 to support the campaign and studies.