Is the US prepared to deal with another pandemic or widespread health crisis?

Based on current assessments, experts and public health organizations paint a concerning picture: the U.S. faces significant gaps in pandemic preparedness, driven largely by recent funding cuts, agency restructuring, and workforce reductions — even as some technical/surveillance capabilities have improved since COVID-19.

Signs of Weakened Preparedness

Major funding cuts and clawbacks: The administration has taken aggressive action against pandemic-related infrastructure. On March 26, 2025, the NIH and CDC began cancelling billions of dollars in grant funding for research related to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the CDC planning to cancel $11.4 billion in funds for pandemic response, including Covid testing, vaccination, and community health workers. Separately, the March 2025 termination of more than $12 billion in COVID-19-era grants had funding that had been broadened to support infectious disease monitoring, laboratory capacity, emergency preparedness, and mental health services.

Proposed budget cuts: According to Trust for America's Health (TFAH), the President's proposed FY 2026 budget for the CDC amounts to a 53 percent reduction in funding as compared to FY 2024, and within that total, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program faces a 52 percent funding reduction. Since about 80 percent of the CDC's domestic budget flows to states, localities, tribes and community partners, and federal funding accounts for about half of state and local health department budgets, cuts to federal spending directly translate into cuts to local public health capacity.

Vaccine R&D disruption: The cancellation of nearly $500 million in contracts funding mRNA vaccine research and development in August 2025 has been described as a potential disruption to the research, development, and deployment of countermeasures needed for the next public health emergency.

Leadership vacuum: The White House office created specifically to coordinate pandemic response has been gutted — in 2025, Gerald Parker resigned as head of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, leaving the office with no employees.

Reduced global coordination: The U.S. formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization in January 2026, reducing access to global data sources that support outbreak tracking and response, and the dissolution of USAID and reductions to CDC's global health programs have further curtailed capacity.

Looking ahead to FY2027: Further cuts are already proposed — the proposed FY 2027 budget would eliminate the Hospital Preparedness Program entirely and cut the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement by approximately 52 percent.

State-Level Readiness Gaps

TFAH's latest state-by-state assessment finds uneven readiness nationwide. The 2026 report assesses national preparedness at a pivotal moment — in 2025, the country faced the most severe flu season in nearly a decade, rising measles outbreaks, continued H5N1 avian influenza activity, and a growing number of extreme weather events, all while federal systems built over decades came under significant strain. The report also highlights everyday resilience gaps: access to paid sick leave varies widely across U.S. regions—from 98 percent of workers in Pacific states to 67 percent in East South Central states—with gaps most concentrated among low-wage, part-time, and service-sector workers.

Overall, a May 2026 TFAH report finds that the convergence of active disease threats and federal instability represents a defining stress test for the nation's preparedness architecture, and that many states are not well positioned to absorb the shock.

Some Offsetting Investments

Not everything is moving in a negative direction. The FY2026 CDC budget request does include targeted increases for certain surveillance functions: CDC's FY 2026 budget request of $963,291,000 for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases is $44,000,000 above the FY 2025 enacted level, an increase deemed necessary to keep the nation prepared for the next public health threat, enhancing investments in a proposed Biothreat Radar Detection System. There's also a broader unfunded liability looming: HHS's own multi-year budget document projects that if funding continues at the proposed FY 2026 levels over the projected five-year period, an estimated $33.5 billion funding gap from the total projected need is expected.

Public Trust — A Non-Financial Vulnerability

Beyond funding, experts point to trust and communication as critical weak points. Discussions at a 2026 international scientific meeting emphasized that the COVID-19 pandemic made clear that public health guidance is only effective if people trust it, and mistrust, misinformation, and confusion around evolving recommendations slowed response efforts — meaning trust must be rebuilt before the next crisis, not during it.

Bottom Line

The evidence suggests the U.S. is currently less prepared than it was in recent years for a major pandemic or health crisis, primarily due to significant proposed and enacted cuts to CDC, NIH, and state/local public health funding, the elimination of key coordinating offices, withdrawal from international health cooperation (WHO), and disruption to vaccine R&D pipelines. While some targeted surveillance investments continue, public health experts and nonpartisan watchdog organizations broadly warn that the infrastructure built up after COVID-19 is eroding at a moment when active threats (H5N1 avian flu, measles resurgence, severe flu seasons) are already testing the system.