The Biden administration announced Nov. 27 that it plans to broaden the capabilities of the HHS to allow it to make further investments in domestic production of critical medicines and medical supplies.
The policy the administration is enacting falls under Title III of the Defense Production Act, which was enacted in 1950, during the Cold War, to bolster research, development, production and scaling of essential supplies. Invoking this policy allows for further investment to be made in the domestic capacity to produce supplies at scale that have determined to be critical to U.S. national defense.
As part of this, the HHS will invest $35 million into sterile injectables and designate a supply chain resilience and shortage coordinator to oversee and address shortages.
The administration also noted that a report on the state of the pharmaceutical supply chain is also expected to be published soon by the Department of Defense.