To establish an approved but unfunded contract vehicle in order to rapidly receive funding at a later point in response to a crisis or emergency situation - Wisconsin
Project Abstract Summary - CDC-RFA-TP22-2201
Public health preparedness plays a vital role in accomplishing the mission of the Wisconsin Department
of Health Services (DHS) Division of Public Health (DPH) mission to “protect and promote the health and
safety of the people of Wisconsin.” The state has created a robust response capability to deal with
health emergencies, including rapid activation of incident management, pre-identified surge resources,
pre-existing contracts and expedited administrative processes to ensure money and resources can be
quickly acquired and distributed during response. This application describes actions that DHS would take
during a large scale emerging disease outbreak, most of which are easily generalizable to health
emergencies originating from any hazard and would achieve the following outcomes:
• Earliest possible activation and management of emergency operations
• Earliest possible identification and investigation of an incident/index case
• Timely implementation of intervention and control measures
• Timely communication of risk and essential elements of information by partners
• Timely coordination and support of response activities with healthcare and other partners
The gaps Wisconsin would see in a large-scale response, identified across all six federally defined
domains ((1) incident management; 2) jurisdictional recovery; 3) biosurveillance; 4) information
management; 5) countermeasures and mitigation; and, 6) surge management), and that could be
supported through supplemental federal funding, are:
• staff: costs associated with surge personnel needs for DHS, including travel and related administrative
costs
• partner support: costs associated with services and activities critical to responses that are handled by
partners such as WSLH, the Milwaukee back-up laboratory, 211, and a range of professional associations
• supplies: costs associated with general office supplies, Information technology equipment, coolers,
etc.
• contracts: costs associated with established contracts for materials (PPE. pharmaceutical purchases)
and services (foreign language translation, POD security)
• LPHAs: costs associated with awards to local agencies that support the activities required by the
response including staff, training, supplies, information technology, etc.
• other costs: costs associated with miscellaneous items such as conference call lines, venue costs for
tabletop exercises, costs for background checks performed by the Department of Justice, etc.
This cooperative agreement to support public health crisis response will allow DHS to more quickly activate these resources and processes in an event wherein additional federal support was released to augment overwhelmed state and local resources.
