HHS ARPA-H Emerging Health Innovators 2026 — ARPA-H-SOL-26-150

FundingARPA-H states that EHI anticipates 20 or more awards per year and multiple Other Transaction awards. Review ARPA-H-SOL-26-150 and its cost, milestone, and model-OT materials for the controlling funding and payment structure.

DeadlineSolution Summary due October 30, 2026 at 2:00 PM ET; controlling SAM.gov solicitation lists final response date February 10, 2027 at 2:00 PM ET.

Last verifiedSeptember 30, 2026

Required next actionReview ARPA-H-SOL-26-150 and the current solicitation attachments, select the applicable 2026 topic area, confirm the proposed principal investigator satisfies the early-career requirement, and prepare the required Solution Summary for October 30, 2026 at 2:00 PM ET. Use the controlling solicitation and ARPA-H Solutions portal for submission requirements and later-stage dates.

Broad Eligibility

The proposal must be led by an early-career principal investigator, including academic, nonprofit, or industry investigators, within eight years after completion of the individual's first terminal degree. Exact organizational eligibility, exclusions, registrations, award terms, and participation requirements are controlled by ARPA-H-SOL-26-150 and its attachments.

Atlas Analysis

Atlas Opportunity Score 78/100. ARPA-H EHI is a strong health-research opportunity for early-career investigators across academic, nonprofit, and industry settings. The 2026 cycle spans 16 topic areas including diagnostics, objective examination data, clinical AI, neurobiology, inflammation, oncology, tissue preservation, and other biomedical innovation. The key gating factor is proposer eligibility: the proposal must be led by a principal investigator within eight years after completion of the individual's first terminal degree.

The HHS Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has opened the 2026 Emerging Health Innovators (EHI) Initiative, Notice ID ARPA-H-SOL-26-150. EHI is designed to fund and develop early-career investigators and innovators pursuing high-impact biomedical, healthcare, and community-engaged research. ARPA-H states that the initiative anticipates 20 or more awards per year.

Proposals must be led by an early-career principal investigator from academia, a nonprofit, industry, or another eligible organization who is within eight years after completion of the investigator’s first terminal degree. The 2026 cycle spans 16 topic areas, including precision control of skin inflammation, internal sensing and targeted inflammation control, mechanistic sleep research, brain injury recovery, neurotropic disease, protection of patient data in life-science AI, programmable DNA synthesis for medical countermeasures, alpha-gal prevention, microbiome-informed dental restoration, first-visit ectopic-pregnancy diagnosis, objective-data approaches to the well-woman exam, tissue and organ preservation, next-generation human tissue platforms, real-time sterility determination, localized cancer therapy, and causally grounded clinical generative AI.

A required Solution Summary is due October 30, 2026 at 2:00 PM ET. The controlling SAM.gov solicitation lists the final response date as February 10, 2027 at 2:00 PM ET. The ARPA-H program webpage currently displays “February 10, 2026” for the full-proposal date, which is inconsistent with the newly issued 2026 solicitation and the controlling SAM.gov record; applicants should follow ARPA-H-SOL-26-150 and any amendments. The SAM.gov package includes the EHI ISO, Solution Summary template, pitch-slide template, technical and management proposal template, task description document, milestone/payment schedule, administrative and national-policy requirements, model Other Transaction, and administrative FAQ. Submission is through the ARPA-H Solutions portal.

Atlas Opportunity Score: 78/100. N9+ Fit: 30/100. Several EHI topic areas are relevant to digital health, objective examination data, diagnostics, and clinical AI, but direct pursuit requires a specifically eligible early-career PI and topic-specific technical basis. Dr. Miltie should not be advanced as a proposer until that eligibility and capability are documented.

Source verificationOfficial government source · arpa-h.govAtlas last verified this record September 30, 2026. Always use the funder's current application materials, amendments and portal instructions as the controlling source.View source and application materials ↗