HHS Should Establish a Prevent Drug Shortages Initiative

Early in 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a 2025-2028 Draft Action Plan for Addressing Shortages of Medical Products and Critical Foods and Strengthening the Resilience of Medical Product and Critical Food Supply Chains (referred to as the “Draft Action Plan” throughout this issue brief).1 The Draft Action Plan, developed by the HHS Supply Chain Resilience and Shortage Coordinator with input from other federal partners, is the first HHS-level strategic plan designed to strengthen the resilience of medical product supply chains.

Reliable and resilient medical product supply chains are essential to the health and well-being of Americans. Patients rely on these complex supply chains every day to deliver life-saving and life-sustaining medicines and other critical medical products, including medical devices and components like syringes and IV bags. For decades, supply chain breakdowns have too frequently caused severe and chronic drug shortages, in some cases costing patients their lives. Addressing these challenges will play a crucial role in the Trump Administration’s ability to achieve their goals of improving the health of Americans.

In this issue brief, we describe why a sustained HHS strategic planning and coordination effort is essential to creating a more reliable medical product supply chain that prevents and mitigates shortages. Building off of our previous publication on “Advancing Federal Coordination to Address Drug Shortages”, we then lay out specific activities related to this effort that should be led by an HHS Prevent Drug Shortages (PDS) Initiative, potentially located in HHS’ newly-announced Office of Strategy. Lastly, we propose specific objectives and metrics that could be used to catalyze action and measure progress in the pursuit of a more reliable medical supply chain. 

The focus of the Duke-Margolis ReVAMP Drug Supply Chain Consortium and this issue brief are on drug and biologic supply chains. However, many of these concepts should be applied to other medical product and critical food supply chains more broadly. As a result, our proposed PDS Initiative could form one prong of a broader HHS approach to bolster the resilience of supply chain for all products within HHS’ purview.

Read the Issue Brief