Funder: Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)
Due Dates: March 14, 2024 (Original Response Date) | Note: This is a draft solicitation, no submissions accepted yet
Funding Amounts: Funding type: Cooperative Agreement; specific award amounts not stated; focus on high-risk, high-reward projects with 3-5 year timeframes
Summary: Supports innovative, revolutionary solutions for proactive health to improve early disease detection, prevention, wellness promotion, and system-level healthcare delivery.
Key Information: Proposals must be revolutionary, not incremental; clinical trial stage projects and policy advocacy are excluded; disease-agnostic and specific disease proposals encouraged.
Description
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Proactive Health Office (PHO) is soliciting innovative solutions aimed at transforming healthcare from reactive treatment to proactive health management. The goal is to improve the healthspan and health outcomes of Americans by focusing on early detection, disease prevention, wellness promotion, and systemic innovations in healthcare delivery.
PHO’s core hypothesis is that population-level improvements in access to prevention and wellness behaviors, novel early-detection methods, and system-level innovations can drastically improve health outcomes before disease onset or quality of life diminishment.
Areas of Interest
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Novel prevention, detection, and prophylactic treatment methods:
- Scalable early detection technologies, including low/no-cost sensing modalities.
- Prophylactic interventions to prevent diseases and harmful outcomes.
- Continuous, population-scale health state sensing and early disease indicators.
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Population-level approaches to increase adoption of healthy behaviors:
- Low-cost, effective early indicators of disease and pre-disease states.
- Mental health resiliency and mindfulness methods with high uptake.
- Education and incentive methods to promote healthy lifestyle and preventive care.
- Approaches to increase healthspan and independence even without disease.
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System innovation for proactive health delivery:
- Predictive surrogates and epidemiological models for long-term health outcomes.
- Valuation models for long-term effects of public health interventions like vaccination and screening.
- New funding and delivery models for preventive interventions.
PHO encourages proposals that are disease-agnostic but also welcomes those addressing specific diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurological diseases, pediatric and maternal/fetal health, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular disease.
Exclusions
- Incremental or evolutionary advances.
- Projects at clinical trial stages (e.g., funding clinical trials of developed products).
- Policy advocacy, traditional education/training, center coordination, or physical infrastructure construction.
ARPA-H emphasizes high-risk, high-reward projects that can achieve transformative health advances within 3-5 years.
Due Dates
- Original Response Date: March 14, 2024
- Note: This solicitation was issued as a draft; no submissions are currently accepted. Researchers should monitor ARPA-H for updates on official solicitations.
Funding Amount
- Funding is provided via Cooperative Agreements and Other Transactions.
- Specific award amounts are not detailed in the draft.
- Projects are expected to be bold and transformative, typically with a 3-5 year project duration.
Eligibility
Eligible applicants include:
- Public and state-controlled institutions of higher education
- Private institutions of higher education
- Native American tribal organizations (excluding federally recognized tribal governments)
- Nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education)
- For-profit organizations other than small businesses
- Small businesses
Application Process
- ARPA-H is transitioning from a broad agency announcement (BAA) to targeted Office-wide solicitations.
- This announcement is a draft; no abstracts or proposals should be submitted at this time.
- When open, solicitations will provide instructions for submitting abstracts and proposals.
- ARPA-H uses broad acquisition authorities; Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) do not apply.
- Questions about the draft solicitations must be submitted via the official ARPA-H portal: https://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Ask-A-Question/
- Direct contact with Mission Office Directors or Program Managers is discouraged and will be disregarded.
Additional Information
- ARPA-H is a new federal agency within HHS, established in 2022, modeled after DARPA.
- The agency focuses on accelerating biomedical and health research that is high-risk and high-reward.
- ARPA-H aims to move scientific discoveries rapidly from the lab to real-world impact.
- The Proactive Health Office is one of several ARPA-H mission offices, each with targeted solicitations.
External Links
Contact Information