The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Wednesday announced 25 "genius" grant winners, including three who work in health care or have made contributions to the field.

Cheat sheets: Disruptive therapeutics and diagnostics

Candidate selection

The MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program recognizes those who "show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future," according to the foundation.

Marlies Carruth, director of the fellows program, said the purpose of the grants "has always been to provide recipients with unrestricted financial support so that they might further their creative work and their creative inclinations with as much freedom as flexibility as possible."

The MacArthur Fellowship comes with a "no-strings-attached award" of $800,000—an increase this year over the $625,000 grants that have been issued in the past.

External nominations are sent to the program and are then evaluated by an independent selection committee composed of roughly a dozen leaders in a variety of fields. Each nomination is considered using the program's selection criteria alongside a nomination letter, the works of the nominee, and evaluations from other experts.

Since 1981, 1,061 people have been named MacArthur fellows.

The winners

This year, three "genius" grant winners were awarded for their work to advance health care.

Priti Krishtel, a health justice lawyer working to expose "the inequities in the patent system to increase access to affordable, life-saving medications on a global scale." In 2006, Krishtel co-founded the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK) to "ensure the public had a voice in the pharmaceutical patent system." I-MAK has successfully contested patents all over the world and saved governments billions of dollars in public health spending and helped give patients access to life-saving treatments.

Loretta J. Ross, a reproductive justice and human rights activist "reframing reproductive rights within a broader context of human rights." In 1994, Ross and others designed the framework for reproductive justice with three key tenets—the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent children in a healthy and safe environment.

Emily Wang, a physician and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, who is "investigating the health-harming effects of incarceration and improving health outcomes for people exiting prison." Wang has worked closely with justice-involved populations "to develop effective clinical services and to deepen understanding of the structural barriers to healthcare access that they face." In 2020, Wang became the inaugural director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, a collaboration between Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School that helps bridge health, law, and criminal justice in an effort to study how certain policies and interventions affect the well-being of people and communities affected by mass incarceration. (MacArthur Fellows Program, "About the Program," accessed 10/13; Stevens, New York Times, 10/12; Blair, NPR, 10/12)