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

Based on current assessments from public health experts and recent reporting, there are significant concerns that the US is less prepared than it should be for another pandemic or widespread health crisis, though the picture is mixed with some countervailing efforts.

Signs of Weakened Preparedness

Federal workforce and funding instability: Trust for America's Health's Ready or Not 2026 report, marking the organization's 25th anniversary of preparedness assessments, assesses the nation's public health emergency preparedness at a pivotal moment, noting that 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. The report specifically includes a special feature examining how federal workforce reductions and funding instability could weaken preparedness nationwide.

Major funding cuts to core programs: Federal cuts have hit critical surveillance and lab infrastructure directly. In 2025, concurrent demands on public health laboratories—including confirmatory testing across 48 separate measles outbreaks, a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, sustained H5N1 surveillance, and a severe influenza season—occurred simultaneously with federal funding terminations affecting more than $8.9 billion in Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity program support, which underwrites laboratory staffing, testing operations, and surveillance infrastructure at the state level. Additionally, more than $12 billion in COVID-19-era grants were terminated in March 2025—funding that had been broadened to support infectious disease response capacity.

The administration's proposed FY2026 budget sought steep cuts: the President's proposed FY 2026 budget for the CDC amounted to a 53 percent reduction in funding compared to FY 2024, and within that, CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program—the primary source of federal funding for state and local emergency preparedness—faced a 52 percent funding reduction.

Good news—Congress pushed back somewhat: More recent data shows Congress didn't fully enact these cuts. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 maintained CDC's program-level funding at approximately $9.1 billion—essentially flat with FY 2025—and rejected many of the administration's deepest proposed cuts while preserving core agency structures. However, appropriations alone could not restore lost operating capacity—by May 2026, CDC's workforce had fallen by approximately 3,600 from the end of FY 2024, a reduction of roughly 28 percent.

Leadership gaps: 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.

State-Level Variation

Preparedness varies widely by state. The Ready or Not 2026 report places states and the District of Columbia into three performance tiers: 20 states in the high-performance tier, 17 states and the District of Columbia in the middle-performance tier, and 13 states in the low-performance tier. Notably, access to protective measures like paid sick leave—which reduces disease transmission, supports business continuity—varies dramatically, with coverage as low as 67 percent in some regions and gaps concentrated among low-wage workers.

Retreat from Global Health Engagement

The US has also pulled back internationally, which experts argue undermines early-warning capacity. In 2025, the administration dismantled USAID, the federal humanitarian agency that played a role in global outbreak prevention and response. In 2026, the U.S. announced its withdrawal from the WHO after almost 78 years of membership. Globally, this withdrawal has had ripple effects—the withdrawal of the USA from WHO has accelerated a turn towards nationalism and bilateral approaches to pandemic preparedness, adding another layer to an already complex architecture.

Some Forward Investment Still Occurring

Not everything points downward—HHS's Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response recently released the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasure Enterprise Multiyear Budget for fiscal years 2025–2029, outlining the resources needed to strengthen the nation's medical countermeasure preparedness, with CDC funding under this plan actually rising from $410 million in FY2026 to $742 million in FY2027.

Bottom Line

Most independent public health experts and watchdog organizations currently assess US pandemic preparedness as weakened compared to just a few years ago, driven by CDC workforce reductions (~28%), termination of billions in surveillance/lab funding, leadership vacancies, and US withdrawal from WHO—even as Congress has partially restored proposed budget cuts and some targeted countermeasure investments continue. The net effect is a system described by one outlet as having weakened its public health infrastructure even as the likelihood of a new pandemic is high, with significant unevenness in readiness across states.