Public Health Emergency Preparedness

Public health emergency preparedness and response capacity continues to be tested at national, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. Since 9/11, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program has collaborated with state, local, and territorial health departments to prepare and plan for emergencies, resulting measurable improvement. However, ongoing risks related to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents as well as cyberattacks further underscore the importance of updating and modernizing jurisdictional all-hazards public health preparedness and response strategies to address emerging technologies and new 21st century threats. To address these challenges, PHEP recipients must increase or maintain their levels of effectiveness across six key public health preparedness domains and focus efforts on strengthening preparedness and response capabilities to prevent or reduce morbidity and mortality. As additional public threats continue to emerge, CDC must ensure that state, local, tribal, and territorial public consequences of incidents or events whose scale, rapid onset, or unpredictability stresses the public health system. The program provides fiscal resources to state, local, and territorial public health agencies to advance their ability to demonstrate response readiness by the end of the period of performance (performance period). This announcement also includes greater emphasis on programmatic, fiscal, and administrative accountability. Although the PHEP cooperative agreement is no longer aligned with the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) within a single funding opportunity, these two distinct federal preparedness programs must continue to be organized to enhance jurisdictional coordination and collaboration between the public health and health care systems.