Letter to Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services - House Health Research Agency in Georgia

Letter

Dear Secretary Becerra,

We write to urge you to consider Georgia as the headquarters of the newly established Advanced Research Project Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Georgia is uniquely positioned to support the nation's first federal agency dedicated to a new approach for developing breakthrough innovations and advancing outcomes for all patients. If headquartered in Georgia, ARPA-H would be supported by our world-class talent, dynamic commercial technology sector, and rich public health research legacy. We believe Georgia's institutions provide the best partners for ARPA-H to push the limits of biomedical and health research, ensure accessibility of medical breakthroughs, and engage global partners.

Georgia's top ranked universities, medical schools, schools of engineering, and research institutions are at the forefront of biomedical and health research to diagnose and cure major diseases. Institutions such as Georgia State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Augusta University, and the University of Georgia have enthusiastic cultures of health research, which regularly lead to breakthroughs with real-world outcomes. Boasting a highly diverse talent pool and robust pipeline that include its historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Georgia seeks challenges often overlooked.

Locating ARPA-H in Georgia would ensure that medical breakthroughs are accessible and maximally benefit the American people, especially those who are disproportionally affected by health inequities. Georgia supports a network of stakeholders pursuing innovative methods to care for underserved populations across geographic, socioeconomic, and racial divides.

In Atlanta, Grady Health System, one of the nation's largest public safety net systems, is affiliated with two preeminent medical schools: Morehouse School of Medicine and Emory University's School of Medicine. They experience the effect of health disparities firsthand. Mercer University School of Medicine through its Rural Health Innovation Center and Augusta University through its Center for Rural Health confront the unique and complex health care challenges and wellness disparities facing rural communities. Georgia's deep and diverse community of experts and patients that ARPA-H is intended to serve is already located in Georgia. There is no better way to maximize ARPA-H's mission impact than to be supported and surrounded by institutions whose missions match that of ARPA-H.

Atlanta is the nation's center for global health. Leveraging Georgia's global health community would help ARPA-H engage with global partners to solve our global and national health care challenges since disease and pathogens know no geographic boundaries. Georgia is already home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the nation's leading public health federal agency and hub for global disease research and prevention. ARPA-H would Page 2 benefit tremendously from geographic proximity to the CDC and its innovative biomedical and health research infrastructure. Georgia is also home to the world's busiest airport, HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International Airport, providing nonstop service to 150 U.S. destinations and 70 international locations in more than 50 countries.

Our higher education and research institutions, together with the CDC and NGOs, including The Carter Center, Center for Global Health Innovation, and the Task Force for Global Health, have played, and continue to play, a pivotal role in combating polio, smallpox, monkeypox, Ebola, multiple pandemics, and other major diseases. These experiences provide Georgia with globally connected infrastructure to work with ARPA-H to address real time public health challenges of our country.

Locating ARPA-H in Georgia affords this distinctive agency a unique opportunity to develop transformative innovations, engage global partners to develop timely breakthrough treatments, and to equitably improve the health and prosperity of all patients. As the Department of Health and Human Services and the Biden administration considers a headquarters for ARPA-H, we urge you to consider the exceptional assets Georgia offers.