The Nation's Medical Countermeasure Stockpile

The Nation's Medical Countermeasure Stockpile
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-10-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309443709

Large catastrophic events, or rare acute events, may cause situations in which a local jurisdiction's medicines and medical supplies are not sufficient to provide care to the population it serves. In these cases of natural or engineered disasters, such as a terrorist attack, influenza pandemic, or earthquake, state or local authorities can request that the federal government provide assets from the Strategic National Stockpile to augment the state and local jurisdictions' resources. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is the nation's repository of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, vaccines, antiviral drugs, and other medical materiel designed to supplement and resupply state and local public health agencies in the event of an emergency. The materiel is intended to support national health security and is managed by the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response's (OPHPR's) Division of Strategic National Stockpile (DSNS). The stated mission of the SNS is to prepare and support partners and provide the right resources at the right time to secure the nation's health. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine organized a two-day public workshop to explore opportunities to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainable methods used by the CDC's SNS to distribute medical countermeasures and other supplies during disasters and other public health emergencies, especially those which result in disruption of physical infrastructure such as the electrical grid, central roadways, bridges, and tunnels within the impacted community. Participants explored relevant distribution lessons learned from other federal agency stockpiles and the private sector as well as opportunities to develop public-private collaborations in the purchase, warehousing, management, and distribution of medical countermeasures. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Strategic Stockpile Policy

Strategic Stockpile Policy
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1978
Genre: Government publications
ISBN:

General Stockpile Policy

General Stockpile Policy
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Military Construction and Stockpiles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 104
Release: 1977
Genre: Government publications
ISBN:

Toward a More Strategic National Stockpile

Toward a More Strategic National Stockpile
Author: Troy A. Rule
Publisher:
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered major deficiencies in the United States' approach to stockpiling for emergencies. States, cities and hospitals across the country had inadequate stores of critical medical items on hand when the pandemic reached US soil, and the federal government's Strategic National Stockpile proved far too small to fill this inventory gap. As nationwide shortages worsened, many state governments began bidding against each other to procure scarce medical supplies -- a distribution approach that inherently disadvantaged low-income and minority communities and left countless health care professionals and staff ill-equipped to protect themselves against a potentially deadly virus. These failings have generated an unprecedented push to reform the nation's stockpiling policy structure. This Article uses a simple stockpiling cost-benefit model to highlight shortcomings in the existing US stockpiling policy regime and to identify specific new policy strategies capable of addressing them. Among other things, US stockpiling policies need to better account for important differences in the rotatability of supplies and should more aggressively incentivize private stockpiling of the most rotatable emergency items. Reshaping commandeering laws and price-gouging restrictions could also do much to strengthen private incentives to stockpile and could even help to clarify how states and the federal government share responsibilities in the nation's stockpiling effort. Additional federal support is likewise needed to incentivize the build-out and maintenance of domestic supply chains for the least-rotatable emergency goods. These reforms and certain related policy changes could help to ensure that the nation is far better equipped to respond the next time disaster strikes.