ARPA-H Sprint for Women's Health

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Effort seeks to improve care with scientific and commercial innovations

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Sprint for Women’s Health is a funding opportunity to address critical unmet challenges in women’s health, champion transformative innovations, and tackle health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women. ARPA-H is committing $100 million to this effort through two funding tracks, spark (early-stage research) and launchpad (later-stage development), to foster transformative research and development efforts.  

Submissions are closed and ARPA-H had an unprecedented response representing 45 states, the District of Columbia, and 34 countries, received from a mix of scientific visionaries from across the globe and sectors. More than half of those submissions came from organizations with less than 50 people. Proposals covered the six topics, including the wild card, and innovative ideas ranged from novel, groundbreaking research to opportunities to accelerate and scale tools, products, and platforms with potential for commercialization.  

“This tremendous interest reaffirms the need to significantly improve women’s health care in this country and around the world. The ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health is catalyzing a nationwide and global health ecosystem to radically accelerate the next generation of discoveries and create a portfolio of investments in multifaceted and non-traditional women’s health research approaches.” 

Photograph of Renee Wegrzyn

Renee Wegrzyn

Director, ARPA-H

All submissions were reviewed by ARPA-H Program Managers and additional subject-matter experts. Submissions moving to the next phase* will be invited to pitch their idea this summer, with awards announced in the fall.  

While the Sprint for Women’s Health submissions are closed, please visit our Programs page,  Mission Office-specific Innovative Solutions Openings, and Small Business Innovation Research solicitation for current and future research opportunities. ARPA-H is also accepting Program Manager applications.  

To learn more visit sprint.investorcatalysthub.org or submit questions using this form. To stay up to date with the latest ARPA-H news, subscribe to ARPA-H Vitals.  

*June 14 - Notifications for Topics 2 - 5
Mid-July - Notifications for Topics 1 & 6