National Biodefense Strategy

The National Biodefense Strategy is a national cross-sectoral strategy of the United States of America. Its main vision is the United States actively and effectively prevents, prepares for, responds to, recovers from, and mitigates risk from natural, accidental, or deliberate biological threats.
More specifically, it aims to enable risk awareness to inform decision-making across the biodefense enterprise; build risk awareness at the strategic level, through analyses and research efforts to characterize deliberate, accidental, and natural biological risks; and at the operational level, through surveillance and detection activities to detect and identify biological threats and anticipate biological incidents; ensure decision-making is informed by intelligence, forecasting, and risk assessment; ensure that domestic and international biosurveillance and information-sharing systems are coordinated and are capable of timely bioincident prevention, detection, assessment, response, and recovery; ensure biodefense enterprise capabilities to prevent bioincidents; prevent the outbreak and spread of naturally occurring disease, and minimize the chances of laboratory accidents; strengthen biosecurity to prevent hostile actors from obtaining or using biological material, equipment, and expertise for nefarious purposes, consistent with the united states government’s approach to countering weapons of mass destruction terrorism; promote measures to prevent or reduce the spread of naturally occurring infectious diseases; strengthen global health security capacities to prevent local bioincidents from becoming epidemics; deter, detect, degrade, disrupt, deny, or otherwise prevent nation-state and non-state actors’ attempts to pursue, acquire, or use biological weapons, related materials, or their means of delivery; strengthen biosafety and biosecurity practices and oversight to mitigate risks of bioincidents; ensure biodefense enterprise preparedness to reduce the impacts of bioincidents; ensure a vibrant and innovative national science and technology base to support biodefense; ensure a strong public and veterinary health infrastructure; develop, exercise, and update prevention, response, and recovery plans and capabilities; develop, exercise, and update risk communication plans and promote consistent messaging to inform key audiences, expedite desired response actions, and address public uncertainty and fear; enhance preparedness to save lives through medical countermeasures; enhance preparedness to limit the spread of disease through community mitigation measures; enhance preparedness to support decontamination; strengthen preparedness to operate and collaborate across the united states, including the U.S. territories; strengthen international preparedness to support international response and recovery capabilities; rapidly respond to limit the impacts of bioincidents; compile and share biothreat and bioincident information to enable appropriate decision-making and response operations across all levels of government and with non-governmental, private sector, and international entities, as appropriate; conduct federal response operations and activities in coordination with relevant non-federal actors to contain, control, and rapidly mitigate impacts of biothreats or bioincidents; conduct operations and investigations, and use all available tools to hold perpetrators accountable; execute risk-informed, accurate, timely, and actionable public messaging; facilitate recovery to restore the community, the economy, and the environment after a bioincident; promote restoration of critical infrastructure capability and capacity to enable the resumption of vital U.S. activities; ensure coordination of recovery activities across federal and SLTT governments and, as appropriate, international, non-governmental, and private sector partners to enable effective and efficient recovery operations; provide recovery support and conduct long-term mitigation actions to promote resilience; and reduce the cascading effects of international biological incidents on the global economy, health, and security.