Congress should urgently reauthorize America’s key to pandemic preparedness

It is time for Congress to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which has served as our national cornerstone for health security since its first passage in 2006. But, like many other casualties of partisan battles, the act’s reauthorization is stalled on the Hill due to a lack of political will. 

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act has always been successfully reauthorized every five years with overwhelming bipartisan support, and this iteration should be no different.

On the heels of the last pandemic, many have asked whether the U.S. is more prepared for the next health emergency than we were five years ago. At this moment, the more urgent question is whether the U.S. could call upon its core pandemic programs to respond to the next pandemic at all without congressional reauthorization of the act. 

Congress has worked hard over the past year to craft a plan for a comprehensive reauthorization. However, that plan has been stalled by unrelated issues and authorizations for several major programs in the bill have expired or have received only short-term extensions, clouding the path forward.

The reauthorization bill stuck in Congress strengthens the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and its sub-offices, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Strategic National Stockpile. These programs made up the backbone of the last pandemic response. The bill also extends key programs like the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Hospital Preparedness Program that frontline public health officials and first responders nationwide rely upon.

The bill not only keeps the regular programmatic machinery necessary for pandemic response working but also directs new investments in innovative technologies to detect, prevent and treat pandemic diseases. It supports R&D for cutting-edge technologies and products that target dangerous viruses with pandemic potential to better prepare us for future infectious disease curveballs. 

Among other new additions waiting to be passed is a program that will improve our surveillance capabilities through better data sharing, and one that creates a strategy for better diagnostic testing capabilities through public-private partnerships.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act’s programs are so vital to our national health security that 150 organizations from across the country, representing industry, academia, medicine and public health have signed a letter to congressional leaders urging its reauthorization now. It is rare for a group this large and diverse to agree on a policy, but the act’s reauthorization is an exception because its goals are nonpartisan, it is vital to the health security of the country and the cost of inaction is so great.

Many members of Congress are retiring at the end of this term, several of whom have championed the act since its inception. This includes those who were directly involved in writing this reauthorization bill. Should it not pass this year, losing those voices and their institutional knowledge will make reauthorization all the more challenging. It also means that negotiations will likely need to start back at the beginning without those members, and their hard work and progress on the bill could all be lost.  

Passing the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act is so critical because the threats are real and ever-present, and the cost of failure is enormously high. Congress needs to act now and reauthorize a comprehensive bill. American health security is too important to jeopardize because of political distractions. The risk of another pandemic, an accidental lab leak or a deliberate biological attack is as high as it has ever been.

In a political environment where we jump from crisis to crisis, there is always a distraction that takes attention away from making real progress. If we wait any longer to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, the window for action could close and our shot at strengthening our nation’s health security could be lost. 

Are we more prepared than we were five years ago? Congress can answer that question as “yes” by passing a strong bipartisan reauthorization now.

Kathleen Sebelius is a former U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services and the former governor of Kansas. Anita Cicero is deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.