Fentanyl Response InitiativeLos Angeles

About

A young organization, described accurately.

FRI is early-stage. Its first sessions are being scheduled, its advisory board has one confirmed member, and it has not yet received grant funding. Everything on this site is written to be defensible to a school administrator or a grant reviewer who checks.

Founder

Brooke Edelstein

Founder & Executive Director

Class of 2027

Brooke founded FRI as a rising senior. Before this she worked with the Brent Shapiro Foundation and Stand Up To Cancer, doing cold outreach, donor tracking, and prevention and screening outreach — the unglamorous operational side of health nonprofits rather than the visible side.

She is studying toward international relations, with related interests in political science and entrepreneurship. Three years of Spanish coursework put her close enough to fluent to be directly useful on the Spanish-language curriculum and community outreach work, rather than treating bilingual delivery as someone else's task.

The throughline across her work is a preference for intervening upstream — the point in a system furthest from the emergency, where a single decision changes the most outcomes. FRI is that instinct applied to fentanyl: naloxone in a student's backpack today, and an argument about precursor chemicals and trade policy in the same breath.

Advisory Board (forming)

Confirmed members

Dr. Neeraj Wadhwa

Health Educator, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health

Seats in formation

These seats are being built out. They are listed by role because no one has been confirmed to them — no names appear here until they have agreed to serve.

Seat in formation

Public health faculty

Epidemiology; conversation in progress

Seat in formation

Spanish-language & community health

Promotora network liaison

Seat in formation

Drug policy / legal

Harm reduction legal expertise; outreach in progress

Seat in formation

Health nonprofit (BSF / SU2C-affiliated)

Seat in formation

Status

What is and isn't true yet

  • School partnerships: none formally signed. Pilot conversations are underway; schools will be named here only once an agreement exists.
  • Funding: no grant has been awarded. Applications in progress are not listed as funding.
  • Program results: no sessions have been delivered yet, so no student, session, or outcome numbers appear on this site.

Interested in an advisory seat?

Contact FRI