Bradley E. Karlin, Ph.D., MBA joined the Advanced Research Projects Agency in Health (ARPA-H) in August 2024. He is the 21st Program Manager (PM) at ARPA-H, the first psychologist, and will be part of the Resilient Systems Mission Office. His title is Strategic Executive Leader in Behavioral Health Care Transformation and Innovation. As a PM, Karlin will develop an ARPA-H Program to champion a core idea to improve mental health that will award projects to new multidisciplinary teams, and conduct measurements and evaluations throughout the process to ensure that the best solutions advance. PMs serve an initial three-year-term, renewable up to six years maximum, to design, launch, and run all aspects of their programs.
FABBS continues to actively engaged with ARPA-H both educating our member societies about opportunities and tracking and participating in ARPA-H activities to ensure that programs and program managers draw from the behavioral sciences. FABBS is encouraged to see a psychologist serve in the PM role and hopes to see additional PMs from the behavioral and cognitive sciences.
Karlin is a past president of the Society of Clinical Psychology, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and is board-certified in geropsychology. Prior to the joining ARPA-H, Karlin was an Adjunct Full Professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and serves as Scientific Advisor to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He has extensive leadership experience transforming and innovating behavioral health care in several of the nation’s largest payor and provider health systems.
He previously served as Executive Medical Director at Highmark Health, Vice President and Chief of Mental Health and Aging at the Education Development Center, and as National Mental Health Director for Psychotherapy and Psychogeriatrics at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he led the nation’s largest implementation of evidence-based psychological treatments and transformed geriatric mental health care. He has received numerous national awards for his work to transform mental health and dementia care and authored more than 100 publications.
