Thursday, August 19, 2010

Finally had formal roll-out of the Medical Countermeasure (MCM) review and initiative together with PCAST Report re: 2009 pandemic flu. Roll-out was at HHS led by Secretary Sebelius. I presented the NIH component of the 5 part initiative which is the Concept Acceleration Program (CAP) and the Strategic Investment (SI) program (a 501 3(c) similar to a venture capitol firm). Other initiatives were regulatory Science for FDA, manufacturing capacity, enhance influenza capability (potency assays, sterility assays, etc.). All of this evolved greatly from the many meetings that we had over the past year in the White House Situation Room with Heidi Avery. We finally came to some compromise in the tension between the WH (Avery) and HHS (Lurie- Sebelius).