HERO Act

Summary#

This bill, the Helping Emergency Responders Overcome (HERO) Act, would ask the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take steps to improve detection, prevention, and treatment of mental health issues among public safety officers.

Key parts:

• Create and maintain a Public Safety Officer Suicide Reporting System, and potentially integrate it into the National Violent Death Reporting System. The system would collect counts and rates of suicides and break those rates down by age, gender, State, occupation, volunteer/paid/career status, and active/retired status.
• Require HHS to consult with public health experts, mental health clinicians, public safety organizations, and active and retired officers when developing the system.
• Require privacy and security protections for data and bar use of the system information to deny or rescind life insurance payments or other benefits to survivors.
• Require an initial report to Congress within 2 years after enactment and then biannually. Reports must include numbers and rates, contributing circumstances, disaggregated data, recommendations for further study, options to reduce suicide, and steps to protect confidentiality. The full report must be published on the CDC website.
• Authorize grants to nonprofit organizations to establish or enhance peer-support behavioral health and wellness programs in fire departments and emergency medical services (EMS). These programs would train career and volunteer members to serve as peer counselors and provide training materials.
• Authorize grants to hospitals, federally qualified health centers, and other health care facilities to establish or enhance behavioral health and wellness programs for health care providers, including confidential support services and peer counseling training.
• Direct the U.S. Fire Administration, with HHS consultation, to develop public resources to educate mental health professionals about fire and EMS culture, stressors, retired personnel challenges, and evidence-based therapies.
• Require HHS to develop, update, and make available evidence-based best practices and other resources to identify, prevent, and treat PTSD and co-occurring disorders in public safety officers, and to incorporate those practices into Federal training programs.
• Define “public safety officer” to include officers defined under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act and public safety telecommunicators.

What it means for you#

• If you are a firefighter, EMS worker, law enforcement officer, or public safety telecommunicator, the bill would create a national system to track suicide numbers and rates for people in your work and could make peer-support and wellness programs more available through grants.
• If you work in health care, the bill would support programs and training to help health care providers cope with stressful or traumatic events.
• If you are a mental health professional, the bill would make resources available to learn more about the culture, stressors, and evidence-based treatments for public safety officers.
• If you are a survivor of a public safety officer who died by suicide, the bill would prohibit using the reporting system information to deny or rescind life insurance or other benefits.

Expenses#

No publicly available information on specific costs or authorized funding amounts is included in the bill text. The bill authorizes grant programs and data-system work but does not specify dollar amounts or appropriations in the provided text.

Proponents' View#

Sponsors (listed in the bill metadata) introduced the bill to require HHS to improve suicide detection, prevention, and treatment for public safety officers. The bill’s provisions focus on better data collection, protecting privacy, funding peer-support and provider wellness programs, educating clinicians, and assembling best practices for PTSD and related conditions.

Opponents' View#

No publicly available information in the bill text or provided metadata describes objections, opposition, or counterarguments to the bill.