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

Is the US Prepared for Another Pandemic?

Current assessments paint a concerning picture, with most experts and public health organizations pointing to significant erosion in US pandemic preparedness capacity over the past year, even as some pockets of investment continue.

Signs of Weakening Preparedness

Federal Funding and Workforce Cuts
The most detailed recent analysis, TFAH's "Ready or Not 2026" report, was released amid deep federal staffing cuts, grant terminations, and other far-reaching changes to the federal public health system. The report found wide variation in states' readiness for disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and other health emergencies, and warned that national preparedness depends not only on state capacity, but also on strong and stable federal health and preparedness systems, sustained intergovernmental coordination, and long-term investment in public health infrastructure.

On the budget front, the President's proposed FY 2026 budget for the CDC amounts to a 53 percent reduction in funding as compared to FY 2024. Within that, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program – the primary source of federal funding for state and local emergency preparedness – faces a 52 percent reduction. Since about 80 percent of the CDC's domestic budget flows to states, localities, tribes and tribal organizations, healthcare systems, and community partners... federal funding accounts for about half of state and local health department budgets so cuts to federal spending are cuts to local public health budgets, these cuts have direct downstream effects.

Additionally, this year's termination of already-approved funds clawed back over $12 billion in COVID-19 era grants – funding that... was intended to strengthen public health infrastructure beyond the needs created by the pandemic, including infectious disease monitoring, laboratory capacity, emergency preparedness, and mental health services.

Vaccine and Medical Countermeasure Development
The report also flags the cancellation of nearly $500 million in contracts funding mRNA vaccine research and development in August 2025, describing the move as a potential disruption to the research, development, and deployment of countermeasures needed for the next public health emergency.

Institutional Capacity
The White House's own pandemic office has been hollowed out — in 2025, Gerald Parker resigned as head of the office, leaving the office with no employees.

Global Health Coordination
The US has also stepped back internationally: it 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 dismantled USAID, the federal humanitarian agency that played a role in global outbreak prevention and response.

Hospital-Level Readiness
Looking ahead, 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.

Context Making This Urgent

This comes at a moment when threats are actively elevated: 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 the federal systems built over decades to help states prepare for and respond to emergencies came under significant strain. TFAH characterizes this as a convergence of active threats and federal instability [that] represents a defining stress test for the nation's preparedness architecture — and that many states are not well positioned to absorb the shock.

Areas of Continued Investment

Not everything is retreating. CDC's FY2026 budget request actually proposed increases in specific surveillance areas: 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. This increase is necessary to keep the nation prepared for the next public health threat and will enhance cross-CDC investments in the proposed Biothreat Radar Detection System.

Bottom Line

The dominant narrative from public health experts, nonpartisan watchdogs (TFAH), and even the CDC's own budget documents reflects a system under strain: shrinking federal funding, disrupted vaccine R&D, withdrawal from global coordination bodies, and workforce depletion — occurring simultaneously with active disease threats (flu, measles, H5N1) and increased likelihood of future pandemics. Modeling cited in current discourse suggests over the next 25 years there is a 50% probability of a pandemic occurring, with a mortality level similar to or worse than COVID-19, making the current trajectory of cuts especially concerning to the organizations tracking this issue. While pockets of targeted investment exist (e.g., specific CDC surveillance programs), the overall assessment from preparedness experts leans toward the US being less prepared than it was a few years ago, not more.