Closeup of a microscope eyepiece in a lab

Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)

The Potential to Transform Health

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is a new federal funding agency designed to propel biomedical and health research that has the potential to transform health for all.

Areas of Focus

ARPA-H has identified four priority focus areas that capture its vision for future programs and opportunities the agency plans to offer as it hires new program managers, as well as examples of profound impacts and projects that are awarded funding.

Health Sciences Futures

Pushing the boundaries of current science with innovative tools, technologies, and platforms. Examples include novel molecular platform approaches, and methods to accelerate mammalian and microbial cellular engineering to enable next-generation therapeutic applications.

Scalable Solutions

Addressing challenges like geography or distribution to help get solutions to everyone more quickly. Examples include treatment approaches for the pediatric population that include changing physiology and developmental status, and ideas to reduce or eliminate health disparities.

Proactive Health

Creating new capabilities to prevent threats to health and reduce the likelihood that people become patients. Examples include novel diagnoses or interventions to reduce health disparities, as well as development of machine-enhanced computational models to predict changes in health status.

Resilient Systems

Developing more stable and reliable systems that can endure crises such as pandemics, and social and economic disruption. Examples include novel methods to engineer resilient tissues or microbiomes to maintain health, and new ways to protect, analyze, or present health data.

Info for Abstracts

  • Heilmeier Questions guide ARPA-H programs and are important to consider as part of the abstract submission process.

    Review the Questions

  • After reviewing Open BAA abstracts, ARPA-H will provide one of the following responses:

    1. ARPA-H has not selected the proposer to move forward with the submitted abstract;
    2. ARPA-H requests that the proposer submit a full proposal;
    3. ARPA-H will not request a full proposal at this time but will place the abstract in the “basket” for potential future consideration
    4. ARPA-H will contact the proposer for explanation on any unclear elements in the submitted abstract in order to determine whether the abstract will be selected or not.

    Feedback and outcomes may differ for individual ARPA-H programs. Review the award administration information in the program BAA documents for specific responses.