The Athena Agenda: Executing the Apollo Program for Biodefense

The Commission’s baseline 2015 report, A National Blueprint for Biodefense: Leadership and Major Reform Needed to Optimize Efforts, warned that the United States was inadequately prepared for biological threats. Six years later, the U.S. experience with COVID-19 continues to validate our original findings. The Commission’s January 2021 report, The Apollo Program for Biodefense: Winning the Race Against Biological Threats, details an ambitious goal-directed program to develop and deploy the technologies needed to defend against all biological threats, empower public health, and prevent pandemics within just ten years. Since the release of this report, the pandemic continues to cause devastation throughout the United States and the world. Likewise, the risk of an accidental or deliberate release of even deadlier pathogens continues to rise. The past year has only emboldened the idea that we cannot let a pandemic like the one we are facing, or something worse, ever happen again.

On December 8, 2021, we convened an in-person meeting of the Commission, The Athena Agenda: Executing The Apollo Program for Biodefense, to provide a better understanding of ongoing federal efforts to implement The Apollo Program for Biodefense, the role of the private sector in implementing The Apollo Program for Biodefense, how the public and private sectors can fully implement The Apollo Program for Biodefense within ten years.