What Happened to the Plans? Lessons Observed from COVID-19 – A Workshop

A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize and convene a day and half public health workshop. During this workshop, invited participants from government, NGO, and private sector organizations will explore the nation’s Public Health Emergency (PHE) preparedness enterprise, including existing PHE preparedness and response plans, systems, and structures, through the lens the COVID-19 response in the United States.

The activity will explore key components, success stories, as well as failure points throughout the entire PHE preparedness and response enterprise in order to identify opportunities for more effective catastrophic disaster, pandemic, and other large scale PHEs planning at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. Using key components of past NASEM reports to frame workshop discussions, participants will examine specific lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and explore potential paths forward. Specifically, the workshop will examine:

Weaknesses and opportunities in the PHE’s systems architecture, including but not limited to

• Global disease surveillance;
• Healthcare delivery and core public health functions;
• Supply chain viability and vulnerabilities;
• Medical Counter Measure (MCM) development, distribution & administration/delivery;
• Data systems and other promising opportunities for preparedness and response technology platforms etc.

The continuum of local-state-regional-national coordination challenges and leadership incident command structure disparities, including:

• Preparedness and response capabilities, authorities, and funding streams;
• Staffing challenges and potentially strength of community partnerships to assist in preparedness, community organizing and vaccine advocacy; and
• Risk communication and messaging failures.

The planning committee will define the specific topics to be addressed, develop the agendas, and select and invite speakers and other participants. After the workshop, a proceedings-in-brief will be prepared.

Please visit the National Academies’ What Happened to the Plans? Lessons Observed from COVID-19 and the Future of the Public Health Emergency Enterprise – A Workshop webpage for more information.