An ad hoc committee will conduct a comprehensive review and grading of existing evidence for public health emergency preparedness and response practices, generated since September 11, 2001. The committee will use published literature, gray literature including publicly available reports, public input and information gathering sessions, and the committee’s original analysis and reasoning to determine which of the fifteen capabilities (“PHEP capabilities”) defined in the CDC’s Public Health Preparedness Capabilities: National Standards for State and Local Planning to prioritize for inclusion in the comprehensive review, with an emphasis given to those capabilities determined by the committee to be most critical to preparedness and response. In identifying and evaluating preparedness and response practices to evaluate for each of the prioritized PHEP capabilities and functions, the committee will focus on practices applicable to state, territorial, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response practitioners.
Specifically, the committee will:

1. Develop the methodology for conducting a comprehensive review of the evidence base for public health preparedness and response practices, including the criteria by which to assess the strength of evidence for specific practices and a tiered grading scheme (e.g., best, promising; A-level, B-level, etc.) to be applied in the development of recommendations for evidence-based practices. In doing so, the committee should draw from accepted scientific approaches for comprehensive literature reviews and existing models for assessing and grading strength of evidence (e.g., the evidence strength assessment model used for The Guide to Community Preventive Services).
2. Develop and apply criteria to determine which PHEP capabilities and sub-functions should be prioritized for inclusion in the comprehensive review, along with other topics that have emerged as important across multiple capabilities but which are not adequately represented within the current set (e.g., mental health, environmental health, administrative preparedness, etc.);
3. Identify research regarding preparedness and response practices within the prioritized PHEP capabilities and functions and apply the committee’s evidence review methodology to assess the quality of and summarize the body of evidence regarding effectiveness of these practices;
4. Develop recommendations for preparedness and response practices within the prioritized areas that communities, state, territorial, local, and/or tribal agencies should or should not adopt, based on evidence demonstrating the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of those practices; and
5. Provide recommendations for future research needed to address critical gaps in evidence-based preparedness and response practices, including, as appropriate, additional research on promising but not yet proven practices within the prioritized PHEP capabilities and functions, as well as processes needed to improve the overall quality of evidence within the field.

Literature regarding preparedness practices will be included for evaluation only to the extent that there is a measurable and explicit connection to response practices, as determined by the committee. Literature regarding recovery practices is not within the scope of this study, except in the event where initial recovery practices are unable to be distinguished from response practices. Literature regarding practices specific to the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) will also be excluded from this study; however, areas where public health and health care delivery functions intersect may be included as appropriate.