21st Century Cures Act

21st Century Cures Act

Other short titles	Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Reform Act of 2016 Increasing Choice, Access, and Quality in Health Care for Americans Act
Long title	An Act to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures, and for other purposes.
Enacted by	the 114th United States Congress
Citations
Public law	114 - 255 Pub.L. 114 – 255
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 34 by Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR-1) on January 6, 2015 Committee consideration by Science, Space, and Technology; Commerce, Science, and Transportation Passed the House on January 7, 2015 (Voice) Passed the Senate on October 6, 2016 (Unanimous Consent) with amendment House agreed to Senate amendment on November 30, 2016 (392-26 Roll call vote 592, via Clerk.House.gov) with further amendment Senate agreed to House amendment on December 7, 2016 (94-5 Roll call vote 157, via Senate.gov) Signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 13, 2016

The 21st Century Cures Act is a United States law enacted by the 114th United States Congress in December 2016. It authorized $6.3 billion in funding, mostly for the National Institutes of Health. The act was supported especially by large pharmaceutical manufacturers and was opposed especially by consumer organizations.

The bill included the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act, a landmark mental health reform bill which, according to Fortune, "increase the availability of psychiatric hospital beds, establish a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance use disorders in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and boost treatment for young mental health patients, among other provisions." This mental health component was the most significant attempt at mental health reform in decades.

Division A, which shares the title “21st Century Cures Act,” contains provisions related to National Institutes of Health funding and administration, reducing opioid abuse, medical research, and drug development.

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) was passed a few months earlier. This act authorized many harm-reduction strategies, including increased access to the overdose reversal drug naloxone, for the opioid crisis, but didn't provide any federal funding for implementation. The 21st Century Cures Act designated $1 billion in grants for states over two years to fight the opioid epidemic. The money may be used to improve prescription drug monitoring programs, to make treatment programs more accessible, to train healthcare professionals in best practices of addiction treatment, and to research the most effective approaches to prevent dependency.

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