Emerging Health Innovators – Network Survey

Survey Closed

The mission of Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is to create better health outcomes for everyone. ARPA-H supports transformative research to drive biomedical and health breakthroughs ranging from molecular to societal to provide transformative health solutions and technologies for all. ARPA-H uses Network Surveys to actively engage with interested stakeholders (ex: patients, caregivers, health care professionals, researchers) and organizations (ex: hospitals, professional societies, universities, clinics, non-profits, startups) and give them a conduit for sharing their insights and expertise with the agency. This is part of the agency’s broader ARPANET-H health innovation network, which seeks to engage stakeholders across the health care ecosystem to ensure ARPA-H’s technologies benefit Americans from all walks of life. Ultimately, this allows ARPA-H to better understand the needs and challenges of stakeholders and provides information that shapes future initiatives.

Close Date	10/25/2024
10/02 Info Session Recording	Watch Here!
10/17 Info Session Recording	Watch Here!
Industry Day	Website for Information

ARPA-H’s Emerging Health Innovators (EHI) Initiative has the goal of ensuring that the agency identifies and engages early career investigators and community innovators. To achieve this goal, EHI will provide funding to these researchers and innovators, known within ARPA-H as performers, to develop cutting-edge biomedical, health, and community-engaged research and innovation.

ARPA-H funds revolutionary science with high risk, capability driven, focused research that is not solely for discovery’s sake but to enable a capability. To achieve these goals, ARPA-H provides R&D (Research and Development) funding through highly flexible cooperative agreements and other transactions. ARPA-H efforts can range from a small effort with a single investigator to a large consortium of investigators on a very large effort. Additional information about ARPA-H can be found here. Additional detailed descriptions of the ARPA-H model will be provided in the Industry Day information session listed above.

The EHI Initiative will have two equally important and distinct application tracks, and each track will have topic areas, which will be published in an anticipated forthcoming funding solicitation. The solicitation intends to offer two tracks:

Track 1 – Technology-Driven Innovation:

This track will focus on engaging researchers conducting biomedical and health research to develop innovative health technologies.

Eligible applicants are early career investigators, within 10 years of final degree, in academic or research institutions including those from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) across the U.S.

Track 2 – Community-Centered Innovation:

This track will focus on engaging community researchers and innovators that apply or utilize Community-Engaged research (CER) methods to develop innovative technologies, tools, and/or platforms that can have significant impact on the health of communities across the U.S.

Eligible applicants are community innovators, which include community health care workers, medical professionals, nurses, social workers at community health centers, non-profit organizations, and/or faith-based organizations.

Why is ARPA-H launching this Network Survey?

As a first step, EHI is publishing this Network Survey through the ARPANET-H Customer Experience (CX) Hub before issuing a solicitation. Through the Network Survey which includes questions for various groups, ARPA-H will gather insights from the community of early career investigators, community researchers/innovators and administrators at academic institutions, including MSIs and community-based organizations.

The objectives for the Survey are as follows:

Identify lessons learned and potential opportunities/interest in obtaining federal funding for health research at MSIs and Community-based Organizations (CBOs).
Identify lessons learned and potential opportunities/interest in obtaining federal funding for health research by early career researchers.
Identify lessons learned and potential opportunities/interest in obtaining federal funding and conducting health research by community researchers/innovators.
Identify health research topics being conducted by community researchers/innovators that applies a community-engaged research process.
Identify potential technologies that could be developed and implemented through the community-engaged research process and by community-based organizations.

As a second step, the information received through the Network Survey will be analyzed and used to enhance the EHI solicitation that is anticipated in FY2025.

The responses received to the Survey will be used in the following ways:

To inform the development of the EHI solicitation that addresses specific needs, challenges, and concerns of emerging health innovators.
To learn about community-engaged research initiatives that are representative of community-based organizations.
To develop new approaches to support the success and impact of these researchers and innovators in health research.
To develop topic areas that are responsive to innovative research being conducted by community-based organizations.

Who Should Respond

Respondent Groups	Early career investigators	Community innovators	Administrators
Description	Current Assistant/Associate Professors or investigators/researchers within 10 years of receipt of final degree.	Community researchers are community health workers, medical doctors, nurses, social workers, educators that are currently working at U.S. community-based organizations such as community-health centers, non-profit organizations or faith-based organizations.	Administrators at academic institutions, research institutions, especially MSIs. Administrators or directors of community-based organizations, community-health centers, non-profit organizations.
Insights	They can care share their experience in obtaining federal funding, non-federal funding including lessons learned and potential opportunities.	They can share their experience in obtaining federal funding, non-federal funding, including lessons learned and potential opportunities. And health research topics that they want to work on.	Administrators or directors can provide an institutional perspective such as logistics, funding management and procurement.
Examples	Tenure-track assistant professor or associate professor Non-tenure track research professor or investigator	Community health worker Medical doctor Nurse Social Worker Educator	Director of Research Vice President or Chancellor for Research Executive Director Program Director Health Center Director Practice Manager

Respondent Groups

Early career investigators

Community innovators

Administrators

Description

Current Assistant/Associate Professors or investigators/researchers within 10 years of receipt of final degree.

Community researchers are community health workers, medical doctors, nurses, social workers, educators that are currently working at U.S. community-based organizations such as community-health centers, non-profit organizations or faith-based organizations.

Administrators at academic institutions, research institutions, especially MSIs.
Administrators or directors of community-based organizations, community-health centers, non-profit organizations.

Insights

They can care share their experience in obtaining federal funding, non-federal funding including lessons learned and potential opportunities.

They can share their experience in obtaining federal funding, non-federal funding, including lessons learned and potential opportunities. And health research topics that they want to work on.

Administrators or directors can provide an institutional perspective such as logistics, funding management and procurement.

Examples

Tenure-track assistant professor or associate professor
Non-tenure track research professor or investigator

Community health worker
Medical doctor
Nurse
Social Worker
Educator

Director of Research
Vice President or Chancellor for Research
Executive Director
Program Director
Health Center Director
Practice Manager

Eligibility

Eligibility: All organizations and stakeholders with relevant experience, in early career research or community health work are invited to respond to this Network Survey. The Network Survey can be accessed via the Customer Experience Hub website. Responses may be provided on behalf of an organization or in an individual capacity, and multiple stakeholders from the same organization may respond in their individual capacity.

Note: ARPA-H may have different questions for each user group, and answers to background questions / self-identification may be used to determine which subset of questions are relevant.

Submission

Submission: Responses should be submitted via the online survey. The deadline to submit responses is Friday, October 25, 11:59 pm ET. Survey responses may be saved in draft form and edited over multiple sessions prior to submission. If you experience technical difficulties, email arpa-h-cx-hub@ati.org. Responses may also be emailed in PDF format to ehi@arpa-h.gov.

Responses: The entire survey is estimated to take 30 minutes to complete. All questions are optional and may not be relevant to every type of stakeholder. Responses to each question are limited to 500 words.

More Information

ARPANET-H: For more information about ARPANET-H, the agency’s nationwide health innovation network that connects people, innovators, and institutions to accelerate better health outcomes for everyone, visit the ARPANET-H webpage.

Customer Experience Hub: Organizations interested in becoming a part of the Customer Experience Hub consortium and ARPANET-H’s Spoke network can learn more at the How to Become a Spoke webpage on the Customer Experience Hub website.

Sharing: This survey is administered by Advanced Technology International (ATI) as part of the Customer Experience Hub on behalf of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Contact information provided to complete the survey is confidential and will only be used for survey follow-up. Individual responses to survey questions will only be shared with Advanced Technology International (ATI) and key stakeholders in ARPA-H. Key insights and takeaways will be anonymized, aggregated and made available to all respondents through a public findings document. Please do not include patient data or personally identifiable information in your response. This survey does not constitute endorsement of ATI or ATI products or services by ARPA-H. Feedback provided to ARPANET-H is for stakeholder intelligence gathering only; responses will not provide any advantage or disadvantage to a respondent for any future related funding opportunity or award.

Questions: Please reach out to ehi@arpa-h.gov with any questions about this Network Survey.