About the Hospital Preparedness Program

ASPR’s Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) provides leadership and funding through cooperative agreements to states, territories, and eligible metropolitan areas to improve the capacity of the health care system to plan for and respond to large-scale emergencies and disasters.

HPP supports regional collaboration and health care preparedness and response by encouraging the development and sustainment of health care coalitions (HCC). These coalitions incentivize often competitive health care organizations with differing priorities and objectives to work together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from all types of threats and emergencies. HPP funding also supports trainings and exercises that prepare HCC members to handle real emergencies.

As the only source of federal funding for health care system readiness, HPP improves patient outcomes, minimizes the need for federal and supplemental state resources during large-scale emergencies, and enables rapid recovery. In addition to providing funding for health care preparedness and response, HPP offers guidance and technical assistance — through ASPR TRACIE and regionally-based field project officers — to help HCCs and their members achieve the 2017 – 2022 Health Care Preparedness and Response Capabilities. When achieved, these capabilities represent an enhanced state of readiness for the country’s health care system. As the nation faces new and emerging threats, HPP will continue to provide essential leadership in health care preparedness and response.

In 2018, HPP celebrated 15 years of supporting health care system readiness around the country. Watch the anniversary video below for an overview of HPP.

Resources Overview

• APSR HPP Performance Metrics Dashboard: ASPR developed the HPP Performance Metrics Dashboard, a Geospatial Information System (GIS) platform that displays performance measure results for Fiscal Years (FYs) 2018-2021​. The tool provides an interactive view of performance data HPP recipients submit to ASPR annually.
  
• HPP Overview Fact Sheet: This fact sheet provides an overview of the HPP Cooperative Agreement and highlights key program statistics.
• Health Care Coalition (HCC) Fact Sheet: This fact sheet provides an overview of HCCs and their role in preparing health care systems to respond to emergencies and disasters.
• ASPR Health Care Readiness Near You: The 2021 ASPR Health Care Readiness Near You summaries feature key information on each of the 62 HPP Annual Cooperative Agreement recipients, including trends in HPP funding, spotlights on preparedness and/or response, and highlights from their COVID-19 response activities.
• Core Member Spotlights: Acute care hospitals, emergency management agencies, emergency medical services, and public health agencies are the four core members of HCCs. Learn about benefits of participation in these core member spotlights:
  • Acute Care Hospitals
  • Emergency Medical Services (EMS)
  • Emergency Management Agencies
• Stories from the Field: Stories from the Field demonstrate HPP’s impact by describing real-life examples of preparedness and response and highlighting achievements in health care readiness.

Related Programs and Priorities

• Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS): ASPR is developing a RDHRS to expand access to specialty care expertise and increase medical surge capacity by improving collaboration among local HCCs, trauma centers, public and private health care facilities, and emergency medical services. This tiered, regional system will build upon HPP’s HCC structure.
  
• Technical Resources, Assistance Center, and Information Exchange (TRACIE): ASPR created TRACIE to meet the information and technical assistance needs of regional ASPR staff, health care coalitions, health care entities, health care providers, emergency managers, public health practitioners, and others working in disaster medicine, health care system preparedness, and public health emergency preparedness.
• Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP): CIP for the Health Care and Public Health Sectors is a coordinated effort to ensure that these facilities have the plans and programs needed to prepare for threats to their infrastructure, manage risks, and remain resilient during and after a disaster or emergency.
• HHS emPOWER: ASPR and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have partnered to provide dynamic data and mapping tools, as well as training and resources, to help communities protect the health of more than 4.2 million Medicare beneficiaries who live independently and rely on electricity-dependent durable medical and assistive equipment and devices, and essential health care services.
• Emergency System for the Advance Registration of Volunteer Health Professionals (ESAR-VHP): ASPR administers this program to support states and territories in establishing standardized volunteer registration programs, which can enable more rapid response during disasters and public health and medical emergencies.
• Division of Community Mitigation and Recovery: This division leverages works to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of recovery operations across the entire country, helping communities recover from disasters. The Division of Community Mitigation and Recovery provides technical assistance that guides local and state agencies in the identification of specific barriers to recovery, including the addressing of including the addressing of Behavioral Health needs of the impacted population
  
• Science, Healthcare, Preparedness, Evaluation and Research (EVAL): SHARPER emphasizes a more rigorous, evidence-based, outcome-driven approach to health care preparedness and response and allows ASPR to better understand the linkages to the daily delivery of health care.
• CDC Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement (CDC PHEP): The PHEP cooperative agreement is a critical source of funding that helps health departments build and strengthen their abilities to effectively respond to a range of public health threats, including infectious diseases, natural disasters, and biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological events.