The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), in coordination with NACCHO, is seeking to learn more about the needs of public health and healthcare organizations related to cybersecurity preparedness. As part of this project, NACCHO and ASPR will set up a committee of federal, state, and local representatives from public health, healthcare, information technology, homeland security, and other relevant fields, to examine cybersecurity preparedness measures for public health and healthcare information technology systems and recovery and information needs for public health and healthcare organizations in the event that cyber threats compromise their organizational information technology systems.

NACCHO will use the information gathered from the committee to generate a needs assessment and an analytical report to inform future national and federal cybersecurity efforts and to also produce resources that can help public health and healthcare organizations prepare for cyber threats.

Committee meetings will take place on a monthly basis via conference call starting in January 2018 and continuing through June 2018. NACCHO welcomes a range of local public health and healthcare perspectives including those within rural communities and those within larger cities and encourages persons who have done cybersecurity related planning to participate in this committee. If you are interested in hearing more about this committee, please contact Raymond Puerini at [email protected] or 202-507-4257 by Dec. 22, 2018.