Lorna Breen Act Boosts Behavioral Health Support for Health Care Workers
President Joe Biden signed the Lorna Breen Act last Friday to support behavioral health services for health care workers.
Over the next three years the act will provide up to $135 million to train health care providers on suicide prevention and behavioral health.
It will do this by providing grants for training health care workers at academic health centers, state or local governments, and other appropriate public or private nonprofit entities.
In addition to establishing education and awareness campaigns, the act will also direct the Department of Health and Human Services to study the factors that contribute to provider burnout.
The act was named after Dr. Lorna Breen, who worked as an emergency physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.
Breen contracted COVID-19 in 2020. She returned to work after a short recovery and encountered “a flood of patients dying in waiting rooms, with not enough oxygen or supplies to take care of them, and not enough beds,” according to a statement from a family member.
Breen died by suicide on April 26, 2020.
Alexa can be reached at [email protected]
