Biden Administration Is Elevating an H.H.S. Division to Oversee Pandemic Responses

The Biden administration has set up a new department within the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the state’s response to pandemic threats and other health emergencies.

The change, announced internally on Wednesday, will promote the existing office (the Assistant Secretary of Preparation and Response Office known as ASPR) to its own operating department, Strategic Preparation and Response Management.

The move effectively creates a new federal agency equivalent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. The agency is responsible for important health logistics such as strategic national stockpiling and oversight of national emergency medical reserves. Emergency vaccine contracts and distribution.

The aim is to strengthen and consolidate office authority so that it can act as a counterpart to the CDC, FDA, and National Institutes of Health, which manages various aspects of emergency response. But it can also create tensions between those institutions that have their own campuses outside Washington and the new department that operates from the capital’s HHS headquarters.

“This change allows ASPR to mobilize coordinated country responses more quickly and stably in the event of a future disaster or emergency, while at the same time providing better employment and contracting capabilities,” said Prepared and Responded. Dawn O’Connell, Assistant Secretary of State, sent a letter to employees on Wednesday. Email notifying change, This was first reported by The Washington Post..

On the surface, promoting an office to a department may seem like a bureaucratic reorganization in Washington. However, people familiar with this change say that the new department will incorporate the features it built during the pandemic and build on the work already done by the preparation and response offices.

In 2018, ASPR was responsible for national stockpiling. Previously run by the CDC, the CDC was strongly opposed to this move. When the pandemic first broke out, the stockpile lacked basic equipment such as ventilators, masks, and other protective equipment, and today stands as an example of the burning heat of its early response failure.

O’Connell also already oversees the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, which is responsible for the development of innovative vaccines and therapies. The agency came into the limelight in 2020, when President Donald J. Trump fired his director.

However, when the pandemic began, the assistant secretary who runs ASPR lacked the ability to contract with companies to purchase vaccines, forcing the Pentagon to purchase and distribute shots. By promoting the office to the operations department, it will be possible to take over some of these responsibilities, people familiar with the move say. O’Connell said new hiring and contracting authorities will be phased in “over a period of time.”

O’Connell said in a memo that her office’s new “mission”, such as overseeing national stockpiles, “is pushing it against the limits of a typical staff department.”

The decision seems to have surprised some federal health officials, including the White House and the CDC, officials said.

“It’s a bit vague and even more frustrating,” said Lawrence Gostin, a former CDC adviser to Georgetown University’s O’Neill National and World Institutes of Health Law.

“It’s always tempting for an agency to slow down performance and assign its key features to another agency or give a refund. This is the case if the correct answer is to fix it. I think it will happen as a result, “he says. He said. “Rather than returning the agency to an era of excellence, we suppressed it. I think the Biden and future administrations will ruin the day when the CDC’s wings were cut off.”

A CDC spokeswoman said the agency “supports Assistant Secretary O’Connell’s vision for ASPR, an important partner in addressing public health threats.”

“We will continue to work closely together to promote and protect the health of the American people,” said spokeswoman Kristen Nordland.

Dr. Luciana Borio, a former FDA Deputy Chief Scientist and National Security Council employee, said the office was always intended to be a more strategic division of the Federal Health Bureaucracy than an operational division. Stated.

“We need to be careful that the new entity is not responsible for its operations,” she said. “To that end, we need to leverage the entire government.”

When the changes in HHS changed her authority and responsibilities, she added: CDC is essential to the response. Further erosion of the CDC’s role is harmful. “