State and local health officials can’t be reassigned to tackle the measles outbreak because Congress let a health emergency program lapse, the head of HHS’s response teams told Bloomberg Law.
A number of public health preparedness and emergency response programs expired Sept. 30, 2018, when Congress failed to reauthorize the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, which established a dedicated HHS agency to address bioterrorism and other public health threats. One of those programs allows the Department of Health and Human Services to reassign state and local health personnel temporarily during a public health emergency if their funding comes ...