Funding Opportunity Announcement Overview

Disasters can strike anywhere and at any time. Mass shootings, mass transit accidents, terrorist attacks and earthquakes typically don’t come with advance warning. Even disasters that we are better able to predict – like hurricanes, floods, or wildfires - can overwhelm health care facilities and their workers, risking lives and costing billions of dollars in physical damages and other health care-related costs.

ASPR is pleased to announce a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Partnership for Disaster Health Response, a demonstration to improve the clinical specialty and medical surge capabilities necessary in response through the establishment and maturation of a Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS). In 2018, ASPR invested in two RDHRS demonstration sites— Region 1 RDHRS, led by Massachusetts General Hospital, and Region 7 Disaster Health Response Ecosystem (DHRE), led by Nebraska Medicine. In 2020, ASPR built on the success of these partnerships by funding a third demonstration site, Mountain Plains RDHRS, which is led by Denver Health and Hospital Authority.

This NOFO seeks to fund a fourth demonstration site that will advance the vision for a nationwide, regional response system, and that will help identify issues, develop leading practices, and demonstrate the potential effectiveness and viability of this concept. The new award will focus primarily on building and maturing the partnerships that are required to effectively prepare for and respond to the management of patients in disasters, including those that facilitate rapid expansion of medical surge capacity of the existing health care system, coordination of patient and resource movement to support the response, and the swift involvement of specific clinical specialists, building on lessons learned from the three active demonstration sites established in 2018 and 2020.