Incident Response Framework

The nation must be ready to execute public health and medical missions in response to a wide variety of man-made and naturally occurring threats and hazards, including catastrophic incidents that may severely cripple regional or national public health and healthcare systems. Furthermore, that incident response must be scalable, flexible, and adaptable to ensure that our response efforts are right-sized, fully integrated, and interoperable.

The HHS ASPR Incident Response Framework represents a vital step forward in strengthening and integrating our response to all-hazards incidents and special events preparedness, and bringing our approach into alignment with the National Incident Management System (NIMS)/Incident Command System (ICS) doctrine at the federal level.

The Framework describes the guiding principles, organizational structure, and operational concepts for ASPR’s overarching approach to incident response and special event preparedness. It also forms the basis from which HHS personnel – including both permanent and intermittent staff, augmentees, and agency representatives internal and external to HHS – will execute their assigned missions at headquarters and field levels across the life-cycle of any incident or special event.