Health & Veritas Mary-Ann Etiebet: Confronting Preventable Disease
Jan 29, 2026
Mary-Ann Etiebet, president and CEO of Vital Strategies focused on prevention and health equity. She discusses scaling policy tools like health taxes, strengthening public-health systems and civil registration, and tackling rising noncommunicable diseases globally. Short, direct conversations about implementation, countering industry pushback, and using data and AI for measurement and vital statistics.
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Government Driving Autonomous Clinical Care
- ARPA-H is funding autonomous clinical care (ADVOCATE) to build systems that can observe, reason, decide, and act for heart failure care.
- The program aims to create regulatory and payment pathways with FDA and CMS so autonomous care can be evaluated, authorized, trusted, and paid for.
Why Heart Failure Is Ideal For Automation
- Heart failure is a prime target because effective treatments exist but are underdelivered and workforce shortages limit access.
- Autonomous systems could increase consistency and guideline-directed therapy by applying evidence more reliably than current care patterns.
Apply To The ARPA-H Pathway
- ARPA-H will fund three tiers: autonomous systems, surveillance/evaluation layers, and health systems as test labs.
- Entities from companies to universities should apply with concise proposals to join the pathway and potentially scale solutions.