A recent study by Healthcare Ready, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring patient access to health care in times of disasters, and funded by the Cencora Impact Foundation, an independent not-for-profit charitable giving organization established by Cencora to support health-related causes that enrich the global community, examines the current landscape surrounding state-managed medication stockpiles. Such stockpiles, or pharmaceutical reserves, can help protect communities by providing a means of ensuring rapid access to essential medications during an emergency event.
Developed and managed extensively across states and US territories during the Covid-19 pandemic and other infectious disease threats, state-managed medication stockpiles are a potentially vital pathway for supporting equitable access medicines among historically medically underserved communities.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding in the field surrounding the purpose and intent of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS),” says Tom Cotter, MPH, executive director of Healthcare Ready. “The SNS was neither intended to, nor is capable of, operating as a standalone solution to all emerging threats in the healthcare supply chain, such as drug shortages. In the absence of a cohesive federal response to patient care impacts caused by drug shortages, states are looking to supply their own response — which could have unintended consequences themselves.”
Research involved more than 20 discussions with public and private sector leaders with expertise from state public health departments, medical countermeasure distribution within states, patient delivery systems; and review of current and past experiences and state-policies related to state-managed medication stockpiles.
Key findings from the landscape study include that most states lack the resources needed to develop comprehensive, physical state-managed stockpiles. Some states, however, are taking proactive measures with actions sometimes being led by governors and elected officials to explore stockpiling of essential medicines. Other states are closely monitoring these efforts to inform their own strategies.
Additional key findings
There is unclear statutory responsibility for drug shortages and lack of funding; equity is a driving factor for states to develop stockpiles; private sector stakeholders are concerned about the broader implications of the perceived risk of creating unwanted surpluses or shortages.’
