The FACTS Act establishes grant programs, an interagency task force, and mandates data collection and planning to combat synthetic opioid misuse and overdose among secondary school students.
Suzanne Bonamici
Representative
OR-1
The FACTS Act establishes grant programs for schools to partner with health experts to combat synthetic opioid misuse among secondary students through prevention and recovery efforts. It also creates a federal Interagency Task Force to coordinate the national response and amends education laws to mandate specific opioid-related planning and staff training at the state and local levels. Finally, the bill enhances federal data collection on synthetic opioid presence and use in K-12 environments.
FACTS Act Mandates Naloxone in School Health Centers, Boosts Fentanyl Education Grants
The Fentanyl Awareness for Children and Teens in Schools Act, or the FACTS Act, is a new piece of legislation aimed at hitting the youth synthetic opioid crisis from multiple angles: education, coordination, and emergency response. Essentially, this bill is designed to force schools and public health agencies to work together, update what they teach, and ensure life-saving tools are on hand.
The School-Health Partnership Fund
At the core of the FACTS Act is a new pilot grant program (Sec. 101) that funds partnerships between local school districts and public health experts. The goal is prevention, treatment, and recovery support for secondary school students. The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) will hand out competitive, three-year grants to up to 25 of these partnerships. If a school district, say, in a hard-hit suburban area, wants this money, they must team up with a qualified non-profit or health group. The funds can be used for evidence-based materials, training for all school staff—not just teachers—and even multimedia campaigns to reach students and families where they are (like on social media).
This is a smart approach because it acknowledges the crisis needs both education and medical expertise. For parents, this means the prevention materials coming home should be vetted by health professionals, not just generated in-house by the school. For the school staff—from the bus driver to the cafeteria worker—it means they’ll finally get specialized training on spotting misuse and responding to an overdose, something that is now explicitly added to approved professional development uses under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Sec. 301).
Life-Saving Resources and Planning Mandates
Perhaps the most immediate, tangible change is in Title V (Sec. 501), which updates funding rules to allow school-based health centers to use federal money to purchase Naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication. This ensures that the life-saving tool is available where kids are. If you’re a parent, this provision offers a critical layer of safety, ensuring that if the worst happens on campus, the resources to respond are already there.
Beyond emergency response, the bill requires significant changes to how education agencies plan. State Educational Agencies (SEAs) must now outline how they will support local districts (LEAs) in tackling synthetic opioid misuse (Sec. 303). Furthermore, local districts must consult widely—with parents, health officials, and staff—to develop a specific plan for preventing fentanyl misuse, which is now a required item in their annual plan submissions (Sec. 302). This means the crisis can no longer be an afterthought in school policy; it must be a core, planned priority.
Coordinating the Federal Response and Fixing the Data
Recognizing that the federal government often operates in silos, the FACTS Act creates an Interagency Task Force (Sec. 201) chaired by the Secretary of HHS. This Task Force, which must include parents who have lost a child to fentanyl overdose, is tasked with coordinating the entire federal response. Their job is to find the best practices—what actually works—for prevention, screening, and treatment referral, and then build a national strategy around it. This is the government trying to get its own act together, which is good news for everyone who wants a unified, effective response.
Finally, the bill aims to fix our blind spots on data. Starting in 2026, major national surveys like the Monitoring the Future and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey must start asking students specific questions about their use, awareness, and access to counterfeit or synthetic opioids (Sec. 502, 503). Currently, data often lumps all opioids together, making it hard to see how fentanyl—which is often disguised in fake pills—is spreading. Better data collection, including a required evaluation of the national overdose reporting system (Sec. 504), means future programs will be based on reality, not just assumptions. This shift in data gathering is essential for making sure that prevention resources go exactly where they are needed most.