Technical Assistance for Response to Public Health or Healthcare Crises

rapid provider of information and/or resources, as well as a coordinator of the project management components involved. While it is impossible to foresee which parties (or types of parties) the awardee would be funded to support, examples could include governmental health departments, other governmental departments, hospitals or hospital systems, governors' offices, charitable and other non-profit organizations, or commercial partners.Awardees will perform activities in the following two strategy domains: STRATEGY 1: Ensure Effective Process Implementation Process is a critical success factor in response efforts, where lives may depend on the speed of a transaction, placement of personnel, or delivery of equipment. Awardees must have strength in and be able to effectively perform the activities associated with each of the following process areas: 1) Expedited Procurement (ability to supersede normal acquisition procedures to accelerate delivery);2) Agile Administration & Operations (ability to react to requests, develop plans, deploy resources, and perform administrative actions quickly and with highly-coordinated communication); and3) Strategic Partnering (access to and the ability to rapidly engage multi-sector partners to amplify, augment or otherwise improve response efforts). STRATEGY 2: Provide Critical Content ExpertiseThe awardee’s strength in process implementation (addressed by Strategy 1) serves as the foundation for delivering critical content expertise. Applicants must have demonstrated strength in and be able to provide support in one or more of the following content areas: 1) Administrative Logistics (travel, transportation, shipping, printing, transcription, convenings and event planning, small purchases, etc.);2) Communications (situational awareness, risk communications, media support, project monitoring and reporting, cultural and lingual translation, graphics, writing/editing, training development and delivery, etc.)3) Human Resources & Specialized Expertise (recruiting, hiring, general staff augmentation, payroll, onboarding, orientation, and acquisition of specialized expertise, including but not limited to epidemiology, entomology, infectious disease, environmental health, emergency response, etc.)4) Direct Services ("Direct Services" here does not mean the provision of care; rather, it refers to an awardee performing specific emergency response activities on behalf of a third party, because of a gap in that third party's capabilities, and because CDC has determined that this gap threatens the effectiveness of the response as a whole) The uncertain nature of emergencies make this announcement a difficult one for applicants to respond to. Therefore, before addressing strategies and activities, this NOFO will briefly describe the unique nature of the NOFO's design as well as the approach by which the agency expects to implement it. Both of those factors affect CDC's expectations for the narrative content that applicants will provide in the Strategies and Activities section of their application, as well as in related sections. This information will include guidance for preparing the budget portion of the application.This NOFO is designed to collect responsive proposals from eligible applicants and retain them as "approved but unfunded" (ABU) until a crisis occurs. Specifically, CDC will only make funding available once the agency determines that a public health emergency response is needed. At that time, depending on the nature of the scenario, specific applicants and specific components of their applications will be selected for funding. These funding decisions will take into account various relevant factors such as geographic location, expectations of spread (e.g., with infectious disease-related emergencies), applicant's capabilities, national priorities, impact of the emergency on an eligible jurisdiction, and target populations. Given the obvious difficulty applicants face in preparing an application for events that haven't occurred yet, CDC expects your initial application to focus more on identifying and describing your capabilities, and less on detailing plans for activities, evaluation and performance measurement. As such, CDC anticipates more specificity in your program narrative sections (e.g., Background, Purpose, Strategies and Activities, Collaborations and Organizational Capacity of Applicant), and more generality in the evaluative and numeric sections (e.g., Outcomes, Applicant Evaluation and Performance Measurement Plan, Work Plan, and Budget Narrative). Again, these expectations apply to your initial application. If, in the event of a crisis, the agency selects you for award, CDC program staff will request a detailed, revised work plan and budget, and work with you to develop specific outcome and performance measures tailored to the scenario(s) at hand.Therefore, rather than detailing specific activities in the Strategies and Activities section of their application, applicants should use this section to identify and provide a detailed description of their organization's capabilities in relation to the needs outlined in the Logic Model, and enumerated below. Applicants should present a complete picture of their strengths and abilities, as CDC will rely heavily on that narrative to assess whether their capability portfolio is a match for the characteristics of a given response.When identifying and describing their capabilities, as discussed above, CDC encourages applicants to consider where and how they might collaborate with CDC and utilize the agency's in-house expertise and resources to supplement their own. Those resources might include evidence-based guidance documents, agency recommendations, online training resources and/or other health communications materials. For example, the "CDC Train" learning management system (https://cdc.train.org/DesktopShell.aspx) is a free, online and rapidly-accessible way to train workforce in many competency areas. Additionally, the agency's Division of Laboratory Systems and Division of Scientific Education and Professional Development provide laboratory training in a variety of competency areas, including safety and preparedness, and could be a useful resource for awardees to consider leveraging if factors dictate. These are just a few examples of existing resources awardees could leverage to multiply the support they provide to governmental health departments.When preparing the "Budget Narrative" section of the application, applicants should keep in mind that CDC will use this information as reference only, for the purpose of understanding how your organization might go about performing the work requested. The Budget Narrative is not scored as part of the review and selection process. As such, the dollar amounts you proposed will not be evaluated as good or bad; rather, the applicant's approach will be considered as an indication of its readiness for and ability to perform the work described. Should an applicant be selected, CDC program staff will work with them to refine or expand the budget as necessary. When preparing their budget, applicants should use the below guidance:1. Plan for a budget period of 12 months (even though actual circumstances could result in a period that is shorter or longer).2. Plan for the following scenario (even though the actual scenario under which you may be selected could bear no similarity to this one): A public health crisis of undetermined nature has occurred and CDC has awarded your organization funds to (1) mobilize a team of experts to perform an assessment of the situation and associated threats, (2) prepare recommendations for actions to be taken, (3) present those actions to CDC program staff and (4) provide follow-up consultation as needed to CDC programs and/or other entities involved in the response.