The 2025 Correa–Bergman PATH Caucus bill that would fund university Centers of Excellence for psychedelic research — the infrastructure approach to unlocking FDA approval.
H.R. 2623, the Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act of 2025, would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to designate at least five VA medical facilities as dedicated centers for psychedelic therapy research and training. The bill authorizes $30 million per year for their operation.
The bill does not reschedule any drug. It does not create new legal access for veterans or the public. It builds the research and workforce infrastructure that would need to exist before federal drug approval — or any scaled access program — could follow.
Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) introduced it in the 119th Congress. It is the first standalone bill officially produced by the Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus they co-chair.
The bill targets VA medical facilities rather than independent universities for a practical reason: the VA already has the patient population. About 20 percent of veterans who served after September 2001 are diagnosed with PTSD, and the VA system treats more PTSD patients than any other institution in the country. Running trials where the patients already receive care cuts the recruitment barrier that has slowed every prior psychedelic study.
That said, each center must affiliate with an accredited medical school. The schools supply resident training — the next generation of practitioners — while VA facilities supply the patients and clinical infrastructure.
The biggest obstacle to psychedelic drug approval in the United States is not funding alone — it is the shortage of trained researchers, therapists, and standard data systems to run the trials the FDA requires. The bill targets this bottleneck directly.
When the FDA declined to approve MDMA-assisted therapy in August 2024, one of its stated concerns was trial design and data quality — not a lack of positive signals. Running large, well-controlled multi-site trials requires a trained workforce that does not yet exist at scale inside the federal system. A VA center network would create it.
This is the detail competitors most often miss: the bill is not primarily a research funding bill. It is a workforce and standardization bill. Centers would develop common protocols, therapist training standards, and outcome data pipelines that any future FDA submission from a VA-sponsored study could draw on directly.
Each Center of Excellence would carry out three functions: research, clinical care within approved trials, and education and training for VA residents and staff.
On the research side, centers would study innovative therapies — including psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, and ketamine — as treatments for the conditions veterans most commonly present with. On the training side, centers would require their affiliated medical schools to include instruction in innovative therapies in their residency curricula.
The Secretary must ensure that the five centers are geographically distributed, so no single region concentrates all federally funded psychedelic research. This distribution requirement mirrors the model used by existing VA Centers of Excellence for multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease research.
The bill covers veterans receiving VA care. Participation in a trial at a center would follow standard FDA Investigational New Drug requirements — participants give informed consent, a protocol is approved by an Institutional Review Board, and sessions are supervised by trained VA clinicians. This is not open access; it is a structured clinical research setting.
For veterans who want to explore legal options that exist today, see the legal psychedelic retreat finder and the psychedelic clinical trial volunteer guide.
The bill defines "innovative therapies" to include psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, and ketamine. Ketamine is the only one currently legal for clinical use outside of trials; the others remain Schedule I under federal law.
The covered conditions are:
The inclusion of Parkinson's disease is notable — it reflects growing interest in psilocybin's neuroplasticity effects beyond psychiatric conditions and goes further than most prior legislative proposals, which focused almost entirely on PTSD and depression. It also broadens the potential veteran population that could enroll in center-based trials.
The PATH (Psychedelics Advancing Therapies) Caucus is the bipartisan House group that produced H.R. 2623. Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) co-chair it. It was originally founded in 2022 and re-launched in 2023 for the 118th Congress.
H.R. 2623 is the caucus's first standalone legislative product. Prior PATH Caucus work produced letters to agencies and amendments to the NDAA, but this bill represents the first time the group has introduced its own freestanding legislation.
The co-sponsors tell the bipartisan story clearly: Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) are both veterans and Republicans; Ro Khanna (D-CA) is a progressive Democrat. That coalition — a Democrat from a purple California district, two combat veterans from Texas, and a Silicon Valley progressive — reflects the unusual political alignment that psychedelic veterans policy creates.
H.R. 2623 builds on an earlier Correa bill from the 118th Congress: H.R. 4242, the Psychedelic Clinical Trials Guidance Act. That bill would have directed the FDA to issue specific guidance for psychedelic trial design. It passed the House Armed Services Committee but did not advance to the floor. The Centers of Excellence Act takes a different approach — instead of asking the FDA to make trials easier, it builds the VA infrastructure to run better trials. See the comparison table below.
Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and David McCormick (R-PA) introduced the Senate version, S. 4031, in 2025. The two bills are substantively identical in their core provisions — five centers minimum, $30 million per year, affiliated medical school requirement, geographic distribution mandate.
S. 4031 was referred to the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. The bipartisan Senate sponsorship is significant: Gallego is a Marine combat veteran and Democrat; McCormick is a Republican from Pennsylvania with a West Point background. Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee hearings on the companion bill were scheduled in 2025–2026.
For broader context on how federal psychedelic policy is developing in parallel, the psychedelic legalization tracker covers the current state of bills, state laws, and executive actions in real time.
Two federal psychedelic research vehicles now exist: the NDAA psychedelics provision (DoD-focused, active-duty military) and H.R. 2623 (VA-focused, veterans). They are parallel, not redundant — they target different populations and different agencies. The table below shows where they agree and where they differ.
| Feature | Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act (H.R. 2623) | NDAA Psychedelics Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Administering agency | Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) | Department of Defense (DoD) |
| Target population | Veterans receiving VA care | Active-duty military personnel |
| Facility model | Designated VA medical facility Centers of Excellence (min. 5) | DoD-sponsored clinical trials at existing research sites |
| Annual funding authorized | $30 million per year | Varies by NDAA cycle; embedded in defense bill |
| Training mandate | Yes — affiliated medical school residency requirement | No explicit residency training mandate |
| Substances covered | Psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, ketamine | MDMA and psilocybin (primary focus) |
| Bill status (as of June 2026) | Pending — 119th Congress (House + Senate companion) | Enacted — signed into law in FY2024 NDAA |
When this bill matters more: for veteran populations, for training the next generation of VA therapists, and for building replicable multi-site protocols. The NDAA provision moved faster because it was embedded in must-pass defense legislation; the Centers of Excellence Act is a standalone bill that must find floor time. Its geographic distribution requirement and training mandate are features the NDAA provision lacks.
As of June 2026, both H.R. 2623 and S. 4031 remain pending in committee. Neither has received a floor vote. The bills have not been attached to any must-pass vehicle — which is the fastest route to enactment, as the NDAA psychedelics provision demonstrated.
The most likely paths to passage are: attachment to a must-pass spending or NDAA bill (the model that worked for the DoD psychedelics provision), or a standalone vote if Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee moves a version with broad support. The April 2026 executive order on psychedelic research — covered in our Trump psychedelics executive order guide — created some political momentum, though executive orders do not substitute for legislation.
The Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act (H.R. 2623) is a 2025 bipartisan House bill that would direct the VA to designate at least five medical facilities as Centers of Excellence for psychedelic therapy research and training. It was introduced by Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) through the PATH Caucus and authorizes $30 million per year for the centers.
H.R. 2623 covers five substances: psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, and ketamine. The centers would research these compounds as treatments for PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, chronic pain, bipolar disorder, and Parkinson's disease in veterans.
The bill authorizes $30 million per year for the support of research and education at the Centers of Excellence. This figure appears in the text of both the House bill (H.R. 2623) and the companion Senate bill (S. 4031).
Yes. Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and David McCormick (R-PA) introduced S. 4031, the Senate companion bill, in 2025. The two bills are substantively identical. The Senate bill was referred to the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, where hearings were scheduled in 2025–2026.
The main obstacle to psychedelic drug approval is not just money — it is the shortage of trained researchers and therapists who can run the complex trials FDA requires. Centers of Excellence would build that workforce and data infrastructure inside the VA, where the need is greatest and the patient population already exists.
The Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus is a bipartisan Congressional caucus co-chaired by Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI). Re-launched in 2023, it coordinates House members who support federal psychedelic research policy. H.R. 2623 is the caucus's first standalone piece of legislation.
The psychedelic legalization tracker covers H.R. 2623, S. 4031, state-level bills, and executive actions in one place — updated as policy moves.
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