That agency was thrust into the spotlight in 2020, when President Donald J. O’Connell also already oversees the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is responsible for developing innovative vaccines and therapeutics. The stockpile was short on basic supplies, including ventilators, masks and other protective gear, at the outset of the pandemic, and stands today as a searing example of the failures of that early response. In 2018, ASPR was put in charge of the national stockpile it had previously been run by the C.D.C., which bitterly opposed the move. But people familiar with the change say the new division will build on work the preparedness and response office already does, incorporating capabilities it has built up during the pandemic. On the surface, elevating an office to a division might seem like Washington bureaucratic reshuffling. “This change allows ASPR to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities,” Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, wrote to employees on Wednesday in an email announcing the change, which was first reported by The Washington Post. But it may also create tensions between those agencies - which have their own campuses outside of Washington - and the new division, which will operate out of H.H.S. and the National Institutes of Health, which all manage various aspects of an emergency response. The aim is to increase the office’s authority and consolidate its powers so that it can operate as a counterpart to the C.D.C., the F.D.A. The move effectively creates a new federal agency - on par with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration - that will be responsible for crucial health logistics, including oversight of the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s emergency medical reserve, and contracting for and distributing vaccines in an emergency. The change, announced internally on Wednesday, will elevate an existing office - that of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, known as ASPR - to its own operating division, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. The Biden administration is creating a new division within the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the nation’s response to pandemic threats and other health emergencies, a recognition that the department is structurally ill equipped to handle disasters like the coronavirus pandemic.
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