The Johns Hopkins University Selected as Regional Center for Public Health Preparedness and Response

October 7, 2024 – The Johns Hopkins University has been selected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office of Readiness and Response (ORR) Division of Readiness and Response Science (DRRS) to establish the Regional Center for Public Health Preparedness and Response (PHPR) for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 3, which includes Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. This work, led by the Center for Health Security (CHS) and the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR), is part of a national initiative to enhance public health preparedness and response (PHPR) capabilities across the United States, with funding awarded to one institution in each HHS region.

The Johns Hopkins-led Regional Center’s implementation partners include the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center; Cynthia Baur, Director, Horowitz Center for Health Literacy at the University of Maryland; and Cathy Slemp, MD, MPH, former health commissioner of West Virginia.

“We are proud to be at the forefront of this essential effort to improve public health readiness across our region,” said project Director Tara Kirk Sell, PhD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and project Co-Principal Investigators Crystal Watson, DrPH, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and J. Lee Jenkins, MD, MS, FACEP, CEPAR Deputy Director and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine.

CDC awarded a total of $9,054,230 across 10 institutions for the first year of the 5-year cooperative agreement, subject to available funding. The Regional Centers will form a network to enhance communities’ ability to prepare for and respond to public health threats by advancing the uptake of evidence-based strategies and interventions.

For more information please visit Regional Centers for Public Health Preparedness and Response.

For media inquiries, please contact Cagla Giray, Communications Director, at cgiray1@jhu.edu.