Working Across the Five Boroughs
Designed to support New York City across the entire lifecycle of emergency preparedness, PRI advances a dynamic set of activities that increase resilience to the adverse consequences of public health emergencies, maximizing engagement and impact across the city, particularly in underserved communities.
The PRI Central Headquarters will house PRI’s management team and citywide innovation, research, communications, industry engagement and equity initiatives.
Moreover, because New York City is a city of neighborhoods, PRI will establish Borough Hubs in all five boroughs to offer locally tailored training and collaboration opportunities. These Hubs will also support communities during public health emergencies, as the need arises.
Working Across the Region
PRI leads the CDC-supported Region 2 Center for Public Health Preparedness and Response, covering New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands over a five-year period from October 1 2024 to September 30 2029. In the first year, PRI convened a 30-member Regional Coordinating Body that includes health departments, emergency managers, Tribal Nations, academic partners, hospitals, and community groups. Together they identified urgent regional priorities—expanding surge staffing and credentialing capacity, investing in hyperlocal response networks, and supporting neighborhood-level readiness.
PRI is now translating these priorities into a comprehensive five-year regional workplan and co-developing a complementary plan with Rutgers University to support rural, tribal, and frontier communities. The goal is to align evidence-based strategies with local needs and piloting interventions that build resilience and narrow health disparities across the region.
Working Across the Nation
PRI serves as the CDC’s Coordination and Technical Assistance Partner (CTAP) for all ten Regional Public Health Preparedness and Response centers across the United States. Under a five-year cooperative agreement, PRI is creating a national learning network, launching Communities of Practice, providing training and technical assistance, and maintaining a continuously updated national inventory of evidence-based strategies and interventions.
In its first year, PRI convened bimonthly virtual workshops to establish the PHPR Learning Network, deployed a PrepNexus system for collaboration and resource sharing, hosted sessions at the NACCHO Preparedness Summit, supported centers with evaluation and intervention design tools, and began defining criteria for evidence in public health emergency preparedness.
In Year Two and beyond, PRI will release “EvidenceLink,” a public inventory of evidence-based tools, support peer learning across centers, strengthen evaluation capacity, and scale proven interventions to improve national preparedness infrastructure.