The quiet collapse of America's pandemic preparedness
The White House’s pandemic preparedness team has quietly withered to a single part-time employee.
Last month, Dr. Gerald Parker, the top White House pandemic preparedness official, resigned as senior director for the National Security Council's Biosecurity and Pandemic Response directorate. His exit drew needed, though still scant, attention to a troubling reality: the biosecurity office now has no full-time staff, and the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), which some headlines mistakenly claimed Parker led, has sat empty since late June.
This collapse comes as pandemic preparedness and public health programs are being dismantled, measles outbreaks in undervaccinated communities reach a 33-year high, and H5N1 bird flu spreads through U.S. farms. The White House offices responsible for coordinating the U.S. government's response to biological threats have effectively vanished.
Congress established OPPR in 2022 with broad bipartisan support to coordinate and strengthen domestic pandemic preparedness and response. It worked alongside the National Security Council's Global Health Security and Biodefense directorate (renamed Biosecurity and Pandemic Response, or BPR, in 2025), which focused on global threats to national security.
As OPPR’s first (and so far only) director, Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs told Congress the office was meant to build on "the foundation laid by multiple administrations over the past twenty years which have recognized that biological threats are increasing in frequency and impact."
In its brief existence, OPPR helped secure supply for a new infant RSV immunization, coordinated the federal H5N1 response, forged international partnerships to safeguard pharmaceutical supply chains, assessed government progress on biodefense and, in collaboration with BPR, finalized the Playbook for Biological Incident Response, an interagency guide for rapidly coordinating and operationalizing the U.S. response to biological threats.
When President Trump appointed Parker to lead BPR, many hoped his decades of experience could help integrate OPPR into the National Security Council, or otherwise restore its function. But leadership above him showed little urgency.
Before the presidential transition, OPPR had 20 staff and the NSC’s directorate had about 10. Most resigned before the handover, as is typical for political appointees, to make room for new administration appointments. However, the incoming administration never replaced them, leaving each office with only about five remaining staff members. Without new leadership and institutional support, the remaining OPPR staff began resigning one by one. By late June, when co-author Britt Lampert departed, the office was empty, and at BPR only Parker and the part-time staffer remained.
The pattern is familiar. In 2018, Trump disbanded the NSC’s Global Health Security and Biodefense directorate. In 2024, he vowed to disband OPPR. Shrinking White House biosecurity capacity is consistent with that history, but leaving zero full-time pandemic preparedness experts in the White House is not just shortsighted. It’s reckless.
Early detection of biological threats and rapid, coordinated response often mean the difference between containment and catastrophe. The required speed and unity remain elusive when the U.S. repeatedly dismantles preparedness during quiet periods and scrambles to rebuild during crises.
OPPR was created to break this cycle — to serve as a permanent White House hub for pandemic readiness, aligning agencies and preserving institutional memory between administrations.
Its creation was a significant step forward, but it wasn't without flaws. Congress never provided dedicated funding, leaving OPPR vulnerable to shifting priorities. And while OPPR and BPR collaborated effectively, thanks to strong relationships between office leadership, an effective partnership shouldn't hinge on personalities.
Coordination between domestic and global preparedness must be built into the structure itself, ensuring continuity regardless of personnel changes. Without that foundation, even well-functioning partnerships can dissolve the moment key players depart.
The current leadership vacuum is dangerous, but it's also an opportunity to rebuild smarter. The White House should seize this moment to unify domestic and global preparedness under a single leadership structure, with stable appropriations and enough full-time experts to coordinate whole-of-government responses in real time.
Anything less than unified, well-resourced leadership isn't just poor policy — it's gambling with lives, the economy and national security. The next pandemic will not wait for us to get our house in order.
Anemone Franz is a biosecurity expert at the American Enterprise Institute. Britt Lampert served as senior adviser at the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.
