Henry Ford Health System

Henry Ford Health System, doing business as Henry Ford Athletic Medicine At Cottage, is a tax-exempt non-profit healthcare system headquartered in Detroit, Michigan that receives federal funding as a prime recipient on biomedical research grants and as a delivery partner on clinical research networks, with a secondary footprint as a subcontractor on clinical trials and research projects led by academic medical centers and federal agencies.

Henry Ford Health System operates as a non-profit integrated healthcare provider spanning hospitals, physician practices, and research infrastructure across Michigan. The organization is not an SBA-certified set-aside firm and competes in full-and-open federal funding channels. Its federal award footprint is heavily concentrated in federal grant work rather than contracts; 302 prime awards and 165 sub-awards total 467 federal funding actions across all sources, with grants constituting the dominant modality. The organization does not report SCI-reportable service contract invoicing above the $150,000 threshold in FY2023 or FY2024; SCI activity in FY2022 shows $2.4 million in invoiced federal service revenue supporting roughly 11.8 FTEs at median government-paid rates around $18.63 per hour.

Henry Ford's customer base is heavily skewed toward the National Institutes of Health, which drives 39% of recent award count and 98% of combined potential value across all awards. The National Cancer Institute alone anchors 36 awards valued at $1.01 billion combined potential, followed by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (27 awards), National Institute of Mental Health (24 awards), and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (21 awards). The Department of the Army Medical Command and Defense Health Agency together account for nine awards valued at $45 thousand combined potential. This concentration reflects Henry Ford's research-intensive posture and heavy reliance on NIH grant funding rather than defense or civilian agency contracts.

Henry Ford holds seat on the Cancer Study Cohort Recruitment parent vehicle under the National Cancer Institute with five task orders valued at $47.8 million combined potential, including a $23.6 million delivery order issued on September 27, 2024 for cancer study cohort recruitment and enrollment activities running through September 2027. The organization also places work under the Indefinite Delivery Contract GS06T00BND0254 (four task orders, $10.2 million combined potential) and the NCI Cancer Genome Atlas Program Tissue Purchase agreement.

Recent capability work illustrates Henry Ford's position as a health research and clinical trial delivery platform. Prime examples include a $3.35 million Military Medical Research and Development grant from the Defense Health Agency (awarded September 2026, completion September 2030) for translating digital wrist tomosynthesis technology to osteoporosis screening; a $5.09 million SAMHSA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Projects of Regional and National Significance grant (awarded September 2025, completion September 2027) for the Detroit HCV Elimination Project integrating hospital-based and street-based services to diagnose and treat hepatitis C, substance use disorder, serious mental illness, and housing instability; and multiple National Cancer Institute and Defense Health Agency project grants spanning pancreatic cancer biology, prostate cancer immunotherapy, ovarian cancer metabolism, and glioma detection via circulating cell-free DNA methylation, each typically valued between $500 thousand and $1 million over two to four years.

Henry Ford also operates as a subcontractor on clinical research networks, with named sub-recipient roles including partnership with Vanderbilt University Medical Center on surveillance of acutely ill adults with respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 (awarded July 2024), sub-recipient status under the State of Michigan on perinatal and maternal health projects (multiple awards from February to September 2025), and participation in research centers at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University on topics ranging from environmental stress (the CURES Translational Research Support Core), pediatric atopic diseases, and adverse maternal/child health outcomes. The organization subcontracts across health services, implementation science, clinical trial coordination, and biospecimen/data management roles.

Activity has grown modestly year over year, with 21 awards in 2022, 53 in 2023, and 62 in 2024, followed by 42 awards in 2025 and 11 in 2026 (through mid-September). Nineteen awards valued at $23.6 million combined potential are scheduled for ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months and represent near-term recompete exposure. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, average sub-hours share reaches 36%, indicating Henry Ford builds its own delivery teams while leveraging subcontractor support for specialized labor; four named subcontractors appear in the recent SCI dataset.

Henry Ford Health System operates two named subsidiaries: W A Foote Memorial Hospital (hospital, non-profit) and Alliance Health & Life Insurance Co (non-profit), each of which may carry capability framing distinct from the parent organization's core research and clinical delivery activities.