Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response

Topics on this page: Summary of Activities that Continue | Summary of Activities that will Not Continue | Summary of Contingency Staffing Plan

Summary of Activities that Continue

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) will continue support of public health and medical emergency responses, critical interagency support requests, and National Special Security Events to provide lifesaving and life sustaining care.  Response to life saving and life sustaining public health and medical requirements, as part of HHS's statutory emergency support function 8 requirements, will see significant delays.  ASPR's support to disaster impacted communities and National Special Securities events will be slow to muster and potentially be minimized due to a furlough/ shutdown posture.  Jurisdictional connectivity, via ASPR Regions, will continue to ensure access and coordination to address federal medical requests.  Retained FTEs and PHS Commissioned Corps officers will ensure that modest medical teams and equipment caches are able to be deployed if necessary.  FEMA mission assignments (MA) are “no-year funding” and agnostic to any lapse in federal appropriations.  If HHS has an active mission assignment from FEMA for an active response or recovery mission, those activities will not be impacted.  The awarding actions, ability to execute funds, technical oversight and management, and all of the reporting required by leadership and stakeholders are essential to ensure that the projects advance as quickly as possible and will continue.

ASPR staff will continue  monitoring for public health and medical emergencies and other critical functions.  ASPR staff will continue negotiating, awarding, and managing contracts that are critical to the other material threats within ASPR's mission. These tasks include executing contract actions for the development of medical countermeasures for CBRN and pandemic preparedness and response efforts and the overall technical oversight and management of those contracts post award to ensure appropriate fiduciary oversight. The contractual actions and oversight are essential to ensure that the projects advance as quickly as possible.  BARDA has planned to utilize two-year appropriated funds to maintain operational staffing for individuals covered under advanced research and development funding for up to five months. Although ASPR does have the ability to carry over funds to sustain the critical operations of MCM development, procurement, stockpiling and replacement, in BARDA and the SNS, a lapse in funding may result in insufficient resources to fund procurement and service contract options, resulting in the loss of product or in the loss of manufacturing capacity for entire product lines.

Summary of Activities that will Not Continue

• Office of Health Care Readiness:
  • Federal oversight and management of cooperative agreement programs (i.e., Hospital Preparedness Program, Regional Disaster Health Response System, Hospital Associations, National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center, and Regional Emerging Special Pathogens Treatment Centers), including reviewing progress reports, reviewing performance measure data, conducting technical assistance calls, site visits, and processing any approvals to redirect funding, lift conditions of award and funding restrictions to allow recipients access cooperative agreement funding 
  • Cooperative agreement recipient performance measure data collection, performance measure data validation and analysis, and development of performance measure data visualizations. This includes the Hospital Preparedness Program, and Regional Emerging Special Pathogens Treatment Centers)
  • Cooperative agreement recipient and partner engagement will not continue, including weekly newsletter, conducting recipient calls, participation in partner meetings, e.g., monthly professional association calls, and any planned virtual or in-person speaking engagements at conferences
  • Contract officer representative (COR) management of contracts, including reviewing monthly reports, reviewing and processing invoices for payment, and processing modifications to the contracts
• Office of Planning and Exercises:
  • Statutory requirement to conduct evaluation and report on the conclusions for the HHS Secretary to report on “evidence-based benchmarks and objective standards” for preparedness and response, based on requirement of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019, Section 201 amends the PHS Act (319C-1(k)) with this requirement.
• Office of Director:
  • FOIA execution

Summary of Contingency Staffing Plan

In the event of a lapse of appropriations, 784 (72%) of ASPR staff will be retained including 669 (61%) who are exempt (their activities or position are already funded or otherwise exempted) and 115 (11%) who are excepted (their activities are deemed necessary by implication, or for the safety of human life or protection of property).

Exempt Staff:

A total of 669 (61%) ASPR staff will be exempt and performing activities without funding issues during a lapse in appropriations. These staff can continue activities by utilizing multi-year appropriations, including BARDA Advanced Research and Development (ARD), Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), H-CORE, and others.

Excepted Staff:

A total of 115 (11%) ASPR staff are considered excepted and can legally continue their activities in the absence of appropriations. These staff fall into three categories; 1) those whose work is necessary for the safety of human life, 2) those whose work is necessary for the protection of property, and 3) those whose work is "necessarily implied" from the authorized continuation of other activities or the need to phase down and suspend operations.

The activities that ASPR will continue include administration of funded programs to ensure continued support for disaster responses, MCM management, timely payments to grantees and contractors, and performing minimal timekeeping and budgetary operations to ensure an orderly phase down. All active disaster response operations or deployments that are ensuring the safety of human lives will continue regardless of current funding source. ASPR's 113 Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Officers will support these efforts.