U.S., Canada, Mexico Launch ‘Pandemic Preparedness Initiative’

By Sarah Wagner – October 31, 2024

The United States, Canada, and Mexico launched a pandemic preparedness initiative that bolsters the One Health agenda.

The countries released the North American Preparedness for Animal and Human Pandemics Initiative (NAPAHPI), a “flexible, scalable, and cross-sectoral platform to strengthen regional capacities for prevention, preparedness, and response to a broad range of health security threats that builds on lessons learned from COVID-19 and other health security events in the last decade,” a news release says.

“NAPAHPI provides a renewed opportunity for North American collaboration to prevent and mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from pandemics and other events that pose a threat to regional health security,” it adds.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said the coordination between the U.S. and other countries will strengthen health security. “Our nations cannot be strong unless they are healthy,” he said. “That’s why we will continue to work together on a sustained, durable strategy that improves health security for all.”

Mark Holland, Canada’s Minister of Health, said the collaboration will “protect the health and safety of our populations, while minimizing economic and social impacts.”

Mexico’s Minister of Health, David Kershenobich, said the initiative allows the three countries to “address the challenges of One Health and adopt new technologies and practices in the North American region,” adding that it will “promote a shared vision for surveillance, early identification of risk factors, and the planning and implementation of cooperative and sustainable responses to health emergencies. This trinational effort will translate into more efficient protection strategies for our populations.”

The NAPAHPI was launched, in part, from the COVID-19 pandemic, which showed a “myriad political, legal, regulatory, policy, preparedness, and response challenges that can be best addressed through a stronger regional coordinated approach for prevention, preparedness, and response,” a report claims.

The pandemic “exposed several policy and technical preparedness gaps, including the need for senior-level, policy engagement and discussion to address the pandemic with a more coordinated, regional, and cross-sectoral approach,” it adds. “The need for trilateral alignment and/or coordination in developing and implementing national policies regarding border measures, supply chains, testing, availability of vaccines/other prophylaxis and therapeutics, and risk communications, among others was clearly exposed.”

NAPAHPI also aims to address the “infodemic,” defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.” An “infodemic” leads to “mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response.”

In 2023, the Biden administration established the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR).

The office will “coordinate the Administration’s domestic response to public health threats that have pandemic potential, or may cause significant disruption, and strengthen domestic pandemic preparedness,” a White House fact sheet explained at the time of the OPRR’s launch. “This includes ongoing work to address potential public health outbreaks and threats from COVID-19, Mpox, polio, avian and human influenza, and RSV.”

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