On March 15, 2022, President Joe Biden signed a new federal agency into existence—one designed to do for medicine what DARPA has done for military innovation for nearly seven decades. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, sits within the Department of Health and Human Services with a singular, ambitious mandate: to fund breakthrough medical technologies that traditional research and commercial activity cannot readily accomplish.
The creation of ARPA-H reflects a growing conviction among American health leaders that transformative medical breakthroughs require a different funding model. The inspiration runs deep. DARPA, the military's innovation engine since 1958, gave the world ARPAnet (the predecessor to the internet), stealth technology, and brain-computer interfaces. Its track record of moonshot thinking has been so compelling that the government has replicated the model across sectors—spawning agencies focused on energy, infrastructure, climate, and intelligence. ARPA-H is the latest and most directly health-focused iteration of this approach.
The path to ARPA-H's creation involved a coalition of respected voices. Noted biologists Francis S. Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health, joined Tara Schwetz, Lawrence Tabak, and Eric Lander to publish a supporting article in Science in June 2021. Former Obama White House staffers Michael Stebbins and Geoffrey Ling authored a white paper through the Day One Project proposing a health-focused DARPA equivalent, which became the blueprint for the agency. This conceptual groundwork, championed by Collins on Capitol Hill, helped the legislation garner numerous sponsors in the 117th Congress, culminating in Biden's signature on the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022.
The agency hit the ground running with substantial resources. Its initial $1 billion budget was quickly supplemented—Congress approved $1.5 billion for fiscal year 2023, followed by $2.5 billion for FY2024. By August 13, 2024, ARPA-H had already distributed $400 million in research grants, demonstrating both speed and intent in deploying capital toward health innovation.
Geographically, ARPA-H has established three hubs to anchor its work. The primary headquarters sits in the Washington metropolitan area, announced in March 2023. A second hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed in September 2023, secured through a bid led by U.S. Representative Richard Neal and University of Massachusetts System President Marty Meehan. A third patient engagement-focused hub opened in Dallas, Texas. This distributed model allows the agency to tap talent and partnerships across multiple innovation ecosystems.
The potential scope of ARPA-H's work is sweeping. White House documentation identifies cancer vaccines, pandemic preparedness technologies, less intrusive wearable blood glucose monitors, and patient-specific T-cell therapies as potential directions. The agency is equally focused on equity—a White House white paper emphasizes platforms to reduce health disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality, recognizing that breakthrough innovation must serve all patients, not just those with access to cutting-edge medical centers.
One early grant illustrates this commitment to forward-thinking challenges: DIGIHEALS, an initiative to protect the U.S. health care system against hostile online threats. Medical doctors and cybersecurity researchers from UC San Diego's School of Medicine, including Christian Dameff and Jeff Tully, received support for work that bridges medicine and national resilience. Under the directorship of Alicia Jackson, appointed in November 2025, ARPA-H continues to chart a course that asks not what is possible today, but what becomes possible when federal resources align with breakthrough ambition.