Congress funds youth mental health research across NIH institutes
H.R. 2587 — Youth Mental Health Research Act · Filed by Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) · 18 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 1, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill creates a new Youth Mental Health Research Initiative within the National Institutes of Health, led by the National Institute of Mental Health in collaboration with two other NIH institutes, to coordinate research on youth mental health across NIH's research centers. The initiative will fund studies on building community resilience and improving how mental health interventions reach young people in schools, workplaces, and community settings. Congress authorizes $100 million per year for six years (2025–2030) to support this work.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is the establishment of a new NIH research coordination initiative with dedicated appropriations. It is a straightforward public-health research investment with no private carve-outs, liability shields, or narrow beneficiaries.
What the text implies
- The initiative's success depends on appropriations actually being enacted; authorization alone does not guarantee funding. If Congress does not appropriate the full $100M annually, the initiative's scope will be constrained.
- The bill does not specify how the three named NIH institutes will divide labor or resolve conflicts in research priorities, leaving implementation details to agency discretion.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
National Institutes of Health (research funding recipient); Academic medical centers and research universities (likely subcontractors for collaborative research; Community health organizations (potential research partners in intervention delivery studies)