A letter from HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O'Connell to Hospital Preparedness Program Award Recipients

July 11, 2024

Dear Hospital Preparedness Program Award Recipients,

Thank you for your patience regarding the distribution of the FY2024 Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) cooperative agreement funding. We are pleased to inform you that we are awarding funding today and will back date funding to cover activities starting July 1, 2024.

After careful consideration, I have decided to keep the awards at the FY2023 level for one additional year. As you know, during the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) has kept the funding stable for each recipient and made no adjustments to the funding formula. We did this to provide each of you a measure of predictability and consistency at a time of considerable stress and strain on our health care systems. With the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declaration in 2023, we intended to resume using a formula that adjusts funding based on risk. After careful consideration of the impacts such a return could have on our health care systems as they recover from the pandemic, I decided to delay changes to the base formula for one more year. I made this decision to provide you one additional year to rebuild your depleted workforces and restore core preparedness functions. I also believe, given the challenges our country’s health systems have experienced during the pandemic, we should hear from you before we make any changes to the formula.

ASPR will soon begin a rigorous process to evaluate what modifications should be made to the funding formula for FY2025 to ensure awardees continue to progress on preparedness efforts and strengthen communities for public health and medical threats. We want this effort to be transparent and collaborative so we will seek your input throughout this process. As a first step, we will soon release a Request for Information (RFI) to better understand how existing data sources and information should be changed to reflect our current reality. ASPR’s goal is to ensure our dollars are allocated to the most important threats given the complex threat landscape we are currently navigating. I encourage all of you to share your important perspective by providing responses to the questions in the upcoming RFI.

Health care is at a critical juncture that demands the application of hard-won lessons from past responses while also preparing for future threats. ASPR, the health care delivery system, and our country are not the same as they were a few years ago. We are facing a rise in cyber threats and more numerous and severe weather events. I want to take into consideration the lessons learned from COVID and the current threat landscape to make sure HPP continues to save lives during disasters and emergencies.

I recognize the delay in awarding the funding to our HPP recipients and the difficulty it has caused you in operating without the approved funding. I view HPP as critical to ensuring the strength and resilience of our health care delivery system. I want to make sure the allocation of these dollars clearly reflects the threat landscape we currently face and will face tomorrow.