The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) recently hosted a series of six medical countermeasure summits across the nation.
Topics of the summits included tribal planning and preparedness, access and functional needs populations, federal and closed points of dispensing and federal medical countermeasure efforts.
Summit locations included San Diego, California; Providence, Rhode Island; Washington, D.C.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Kansas City, Missouri.
Attendees included federal, state, regional, tribal and territorial public health officials to identify and discuss best preparedness practices in medical countermeasure planning. Federal agencies that attended the summits included ASPR, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
When discussing federal medical countermeasure efforts, the CDC said it will be making several improvements to its Medical Countermeasure Operational Readiness Review electronic submission portal. Additionally, CDC recently released On-TRAC, an online technical resource that provides local health departments with direct access for technical assistance and relevant resources.
ASPR will select the best practices discussed during the meeting and combine them for a national virtual exercise to be conducted later in the fall.