Thursday, March 17, 2022

Very Brief Blog: ARPA-H: Gets First Billion Dollars in Budget Act

Missed this news a few days ago.  $1B for ARPA-H.

In early 2021, we began hearing discussions about creating ARPA-H, a special research agency for translational health research.   ARA = Advanced Research Projects Agency.  It would build off government funding successes and design-of-agency ideas from DARPA, BARDA, Operation Warp Speed and others.  See some links from January 2021 and a research February 2022 Hill hearing - here, here.  I collected some links about Operation Warp Speed in January 2022, here.

The recent March 2022 budget legislation gives ARPA-H its first $1B, starting now and for 2.5 fiscal years.   The legislation also gives HHS 30 days to decide if ARPA-H will be "inside" NIH or administratively an entirely new agency (like NIH, NSF, etc).   

See an article in SCIENCE, 15 March, by Jocelyn Kaiser, here.