A bill that provides new funding for opioid addiction treatment, changes federal policy related to Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses and fosters an increase in the number of pediatric psychiatrists nationwide passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, praised the measure, called the 21st Century Cures Act, calling these provisions top priorities for eastern Connecticut.

“I am very pleased that the 21st Century Cures Act passed with a number of important wins for eastern Connecticut which I have been championing for several years,” he said in a news release.

He said the final version is the result of a “strong bipartisan effort to address several major outstanding healthcare issues nationwide.”

The bill, which now heads to the Senate, would allocate $1 billion in funding over the next two years for programs to fight opioid addiction, including:

• Improving state prescription drug monitoring programs

• Implementing and evaluating prevention activities for effectiveness

• Training for health care practitioners in best practices for prescribing opioids, pain management, recognizing potential substance abuse cases, referral of patients to treatment programs and overdose prevention

• Supporting access for substance-abuse treatment

The bill also creates the “Tick-Borne Disease Working Group” to ensure interagency coordination and establish research priorities. The working group will report every two years on research on prevention, causes, treatment, surveillance, diagnoses, duration of illness and intervention for those with tick-borne illnesses. It also will make recommendations on changes or improvements to research and solicit input from states, the news release said. It requires that the National Institutes of Health report three times a year on research progress on diseases carried by ticks and other parasites.

“Lyme disease, which is named after a town in my district, has long plagued eastern Connecticut and large swaths of our country,” Courtney said. “It is time that Congress makes addressing tick-borne diseases a national priority for our medical community. The provisions contained in the 21st Century Cures Act will accelerate the development of new protocols for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of tick-related illnesses like Lyme disease.”

The third major provision of the bill will increase the number of physicians specializing in pediatric mental health by offering incentives to medical school students to pursue this field. The bill adds the child psychiatry subspecialty to the National Health Service Corps, which provides student loan repayment assistance to physicians who agree to work in underserved fields and high-need geographic areas.