Biden signs bill named for Charlottesville native who died by suicide

President Biden has signed Sen. Tim Kaine’s bipartisan Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, legislation to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, and mental and behavioral health conditions among health care professionals.

Breen, a physician from Charlottesville who was working on the front lines of the pandemic in New York, died by suicide in 2020.

The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act is a critical step to address mental health concerns facing our health care providers during COVID-19.

“The mental health consequences of COVID-19 are particularly acute for our frontline health care healers, who’ve made tremendous sacrifices to care for their patients in uncharted times. This bill is a critical first step to provide them with mental health resources to cope with the challenges they face every day. Supporting our health care workforce will benefit everyone because we all need great medical professionals to take care of us and our loved ones. By keeping our health care professionals healthy, everyone in society wins.”

“We want to thank Sen. Kaine and the bipartisan, bicameral supporters of this first of its kind legislation. We have learned so many lessons from COVID-19. One of those is that supporting the well-being of the health care workforce is absolutely critical,” said Jennifer Breen Feist and Corey Feist, Co-Founders of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation.

The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act will:

• Establish grants for health profession schools, academic health centers, or other institutions to help them train health workers in strategies to prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders. The grants would also help improve health care professionals’ well-being and job satisfaction.
• Seek to identify and disseminate evidence-informed best practices for reducing and preventing suicide and burnout among health care professionals, training health care professionals in appropriate strategies, and promoting their mental and behavioral health and job satisfaction.
• Establish a national evidence-based education and awareness campaign targeting health care professionals to encourage them to seek support and treatment for mental and behavioral health concerns.
• Establish grants for health care providers and professional associations for employee education, peer-support programming, and mental and behavioral health treatment. Health care providers in current or former COVID-19 hotspots will be prioritized.
• Establish a comprehensive study on health care professionals’ mental and behavioral health and burnout, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on such professionals’ health.