Members of the Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Workgroup have expertise in areas including emergency preparedness and response, disease prevention and health promotion, and disease surveillance. They developed the objectives related to emergency preparedness, and they’ll provide data to track progress toward achieving these objectives throughout the decade.
Objective Status
0 Target met or exceeded
2 Improving
0 Little or no detectable change
0 Getting worse
0 Baseline only
4 Developmental
0 Research
Preparedness Workgroup Objectives (6)
About the Workgroup
Approach and Rationale
A public health emergency can happen at any time, and being prepared can save lives. National health security is a state in which the nation and its people are prepared for, protected from, and resilient in the face of incidents with health consequences. Core objectives selected by the PREP Workgroup aim to improve emergency preparedness and response by building community resilience and training individuals to respond during emergencies.
The PREP Workgroup selected objectives that focus on key needs related to enhancing individual and community preparedness and strengthening public health infrastructure to effectively respond to public health emergencies. These objectives and targets are aligned with federal strategies and priorities from the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities,1 which includes 15 capability standards. These standards serve as a vital framework for state, local, tribal, and territorial preparedness programs as they plan, operationalize, and evaluate their ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies.
Communities are making contributions to national health security every day. The Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) cooperative agreement, administered by CDC, is a key federal investment that facilitates the community’s role in national health security. The program provides both financial and technical support to strengthen public health response systems and enhance community preparedness by improving targeted capabilities.
Emerging issues in Preparedness
Over the coming decade, communities across the nation will face a variety of emerging issues in preparedness. In order to prepare for and respond to these issues, it’s critical to:
- Plan for the increased prevalence of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases
- Use disaster risk reduction as an approach to preparedness
- Focus on health disparities and variations in preparedness across geographies, communities, and demographics
- Analyze how demographic trends affect the vulnerability of populations during public health emergencies
- Increase opportunities for public-private partnerships
- Identify how to take advantage of trends in technological innovation
- Increase transparency and flexibility in supply chain management
Citations
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for Preparedness and Response. (2018). Public Health Preparedness Capabilities: National Standards for State and Local Planning. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/readiness/00_docs/CDC_PreparednesResponseCapabilities_October2018_Final_508.pdf [PDF - 10.9 MB]
