Governance

Summary

This section summarizes the need for a robust governance structure to coordinate and implement an effective and timely response to reduce the economic and health impact of COVID-19. This section highlights key findings and recommendations in establishing a National Pandemic Task Force and coordination across the other eight sectors identified in this report.

The goal of this sector is to centralize the national response to pandemics by establishing an actionable National Pandemic Task Force (NPTF) with cross-functional representation, create channels of communication between key stakeholders and states to coordinate an effective response with necessary resources, advocate for federal funding to ensure economic stability and healthcare affordability, and initiating an active surveillance plan to coordinate domestic and international disease monitoring.

Recommendations

• Establish the National Pandemic Task Force (NPTF) to create and foster collaboration for a usable National Health Information Exchange (HIE) and a digital platform within the NPTF's website for all pandemic-related information to share data and information for the public.
• NPTF to build processes and protocols for a pandemic response to be codified in a playbook, including centralization by establishing a non-partisan Chief of Mission (CM), accountability by verifying NPTF membership and delegation of responsibilities, and oversight through the development of a dashboard to monitor current and future pandemic threats.
• NPTF to coordinate an equitable and orderly response such that all NPTF communication is given by the CM to update and educate the public and coordinate an increase in equipment production, research, and development of a vaccine.
• NPTF to collaborate with the federal government and advocate through lobbying for essential policies and funding through convening all stakeholder representatives to assess needs. CM will have regular meetings with Congress to lobby for legislative changes and increase federal funds.
• NTPF to establish a national surveillance plan by conducting a comprehensive collection of disease data, compiling and reporting data to the NPTF internal database, solidifying a permanent surveillance team, and collaborate and share data to support international disease monitoring with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Authors