What if we moved from a sick care system to one that truly rewards better health?

HEROES (Health Care Rewards to Achieve Improved Outcomes) aims to trial and validate a radically different approach to creating preventative care incentives in the health market. This approach involves offering direct payments to individual “health catalysts” – such as non-profits or care consortiums – that successfully implement preventative care campaigns that improve the rates for specific health harms in an entire geographic population. Examples of health challenges that HEROES may take on include cardiovascular disease and risks, alcohol-related harms, opioid overdoses, and severe complications during pregnancy or birth. To receive payment from the program, successful health catalysts must reduce the overall number of adverse health events – such as heart attacks or serious post-partum bleeds – that occur within a pre-defined target population. To accelerate the program’s long-term sustainability, HEROES will invite outside entities – such as employers, philanthropic groups, or insurance providers – to partner with ARPA-H and purchase outcomes in the different regions that they serve. Over time, HEROES hopes that this novel incentive structure will eventually become self-sustaining and capable of “surviving in the wild” even after the program ends. Program Manager: Darshak Sanghavi, M.D. Learn more at: arpa-h.gov/research-and-funding/programs/heroes