The Science Mission cultivates and presents evidence to promote the Nation’s readiness for medical and public health disasters by illuminating insights from high-quality applied research, encouraging interconnectedness between stakeholders, and empowering innovation to compel new solutions. This occurs in concert with the Operations and Education Missions as well as with the guidance and direction provided by the federal interagency and Congress. To support the preparedness efforts of today, the Science Mission identifies and promotes robust research to enable not only current partners but all parts of the Nation to adopt, adapt, and scale activities for effective medical care and public health outcomes in the face of a disaster. Preparing for tomorrow’s disasters requires nurturing effective partnerships across government, academia, and industry.
The Science Mission aims to recognize, leverage, and link the diverse strengths of partners, partly through the National Center’s Joint Disaster Medicine and Public Health Ecosystem, to further the science of disaster health as well as facilitate relationship development supporting preparedness and response. Finally, disaster medicine and public health emergency events naturally promote interdisciplinary collaboration as responders develop impromptu capabilities and capacity under dynamic and time-constrained conditions. The Science Mission must harness this urgency of purpose to conduct interdisciplinary, applied research between emergency events. Ultimately, the success of the Scientific Mission will be the extent to which operators can implement and learn from these findings, better positioning the Nation for disaster health events.