EHI
Emerging Health Innovators
What if we trained the next generation in the ARPA model of innovation and bold thinking?
The Problem
ARPA-H needs bold vision and creative thinking to solve America’s most pressing biotech and healthcare challenges. Game-changing ideas in healthcare start small—in a lab, a startup, or a young team that lacks critical funding. Currently, there is not an established agency program to develop and mentor early-career researchers. This limits who we reach and who benefits from our programs. Early-career investigators bring fresh perspectives on the front lines of health research but are not as likely to apply for ARPA-H funding opportunities.
The Solution
ARPA-H’s Emerging Health Innovators (EHI) Initiative aims to increase access to government research funding and to seed new ideas that address healthcare gaps in the United States. The program is designed for early-career biotech investigators and innovators to learn how to become the next wave of ARPA-H Program Managers and research performers. By backing emerging talent, EHI ensures the next big health breakthroughs don’t get stuck on the drawing board.
ARPA-H intends EHI to offer multiple Topic Areas of interest across the ARPA-H mission offices. The solicitation will be published annually and anticipates funding 20 or more awards per year.
Only ARPA-H can...
Pave the way for early-career biotechnology, healthcare, and academic researchers to transform the U.S. healthcare system and ensure our moonshots are achieved.
Invest in and mentor the next generation of ARPA Program Managers and performers.
EHI Solicitation: 2026 Cycle
Proposals for this opportunity must be led by early-career principal investigators (academic, non-profit, industry etc.) within 8 years after completion of their first terminal degree.
The 2026 cycle will seek proposals across these topic areas:
- Precision Control of Skin Inflammation without Systemic Exposure
- Internal Sensing and Targeted Control of Inflammation
- Deep Brain Stimulation for Mechanistic Sleep Exploration (Deep Sleep)
- CLEAR-MIND — Restoring the Brain's Drainage and Immune Balance to Enable Healing After Injury
- Host-Pathway Interventions for Neurotropic Disease (HIND)
- Protecting Patient Data in Life Science AI
- Engineering DRT for Programmable DNA Synthesis as Emerging New Medical Countermeasures (MCM) Strategy
- Prevention of Lethal Alpha-gal Allergic Responses Caused by Tick Bites
- SMILE (Smart Microbiome-Informed Lesion & Enamel restoration)
- Ending Preventable Deaths from Ectopic Pregnancy Through First-Visit Diagnosis
- Transforming the Well-Woman Exam through Objective Data
- Innovations in Biotransport to Support Long-Term Preservation of Tissues and Organs
- Organs-in-Action: Next-Generation Human Tissue Platforms for Longevity, Disease, and Therapy Discovery
- Near Real-time, Non-contact Determination of Sterility in Distributed Manufacturing Systems
- ICAT (In-Cavity Adjuvant Therapy): Implantable Systems for Local Cancer Control at the Resection Margin
- Causally-Grounded Alignment for Clinical Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools
To learn more about this opportunity, ARPA-H invites interested parties to download the official solicitation documents, which are posted and maintained on SAM.gov. The solicitation documents outline complete opportunity details including requirements, evaluation criteria, eligibility information, and provide application templates with detailed instructions on how to apply.
Ready to apply? To submit, sign-in to the ARPA-H Solutions site.
Key Dates:
These are key dates associated with the EHI Solicitation. Dates are estimates and subject to change.
- October 13, 2026 - Proposers' Day Event (Virtual)
This is an optional event for the proposer community to learn more about this opportunity. For complete details about this event, download the Special Notice (ARPA-H-SN-26-161) from SAM.gov. Registration required by October 12, 2026. - October 30, 2026 (2:00PM ET) - Solution Summary due
Submitting a Solution Summary is required to move forward with this opportunity. - February 10, 2026 (2:00PM ET) - Full Proposal due
Accepting select applications based on meeting previous deadline requirements.
