AHA, Others Urge Congress to Reauthorize Health Care Preparedness Law

Re: The Urgent Need to Reauthorize PAHPA

Dear Leaders Schumer and McConnell, Speaker Johnson, and Leader Jeffries,

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we write to express our strong desire to see the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) reauthorized before the end of the calendar year in the same bipartisan fashion it has been supported since the original authorization 17 years ago.

As you know, PAHPA underpins Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, programs, and funding authorizations for addressing national health security threats. PAHPA created the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (now the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and provides important congressional oversight and direction to federal programs related to early warning, prevention, preparedness, and response.

This overall framework expired on September 30, 2023, requiring stopgap, temporary extensions in the continuing resolution, which expires on November 17. We encourage Congress to include a comprehensive five-year PAHPA reauthorization in the next moving legislative vehicle.

The last three PAHPA bills all shared major recurring themes: they all adjusted to the changing threat landscape, focused on challenges identified since the prior bill, and considerably strengthened our nation’s health security with each reauthorization.

Our nation’s changing health security threat landscape and the federal government’s responsibility to protect the American people demand that we work together now to find a strong bipartisan path forward to reauthorize this critical legislation. Whether the next health security threat is naturally occurring, the result of an accident, or intentionally caused, our country must be in a better position to prevent, prepare for, and respond to such incidents.

Failing to reauthorize PAHPA would have serious effects on our country’s economic wellbeing, national security, and health security given the rapidly changing threat landscape.

We are hopeful that PAHPA will remain a strong bipartisan legislative framework, as it has always been. We stand ready to assist you in whatever ways we can to help get this important law reauthorized this year.

Sincerely (in alphabetical order),

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