Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act

Key Points

• The bill requires the VA to designate at least five medical facilities as specialized centers of excellence for researching and providing innovative therapies, including psychedelic-assisted treatments like MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, and ibogaine.
• These centers would focus on treating conditions that disproportionately affect veterans, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, substance use disorder, bipolar disorder, and Parkinson's disease.
• Each center must meet rigorous standards, including partnerships with accredited medical schools, schools of psychiatry and social work, and an advisory committee that includes veterans to guide policy decisions.
• The bill authorizes $30 million per year in dedicated funding for the centers' research and education activities, with additional allocations possible from the VA's existing medical services and research budgets.
• The centers must be geographically distributed across the country and will build a national data repository to track outcomes, sharing findings across the entire VA medical system to improve access for all veterans.