Diary Prequel Package — page 228

Feb. 4, 2010 - Opened the Genomics Blue Ribbon Panel at the Bethesda North Marriott to plan the direction of genomics research for NIAID. All the stars were there - Ian Lipkin, Eric Lander, etc. Eric gave a great speech. About the use of genomics in infectious diseases. That evening presented my usual "State of NIAID" talk to the ASM Executive Committee. Feb. 5 and 6 and Feb and Feb 9 and 10 - 2 worse snow storms in the history of Washington, DC. Shut down schools and government for a week - it was a 0ne (32 inches at IAD) - two (20 inches in DC) punch. During this time we intensified the development of the PHEMCE (Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasure Enterprise) Initiative via Heidi Avery. Getting hot and heavy in that the HHS folks are getting cold feet. Although good friends of mine - Nicki Lurie appears afraid and over her head. Jesse Goodman is forever in the weeds. Peggy Hamburg is cautious but just now is starting to realize that this train is moving. Feb. 8, 2010 - Whole city is socked in with snow, but we still had meeting in Sit Room with the usual cast of characters. Heidi has obtained 1 hour face time for us with the POTUS, but the HHS crew is afraid. Issue is that they think that the concept is too bold and Nicki Lurie is afraid that it will supersede the IOM-led review of the enterprise that Sec. Sebelius has ordered for Feb. 22-23 and that must report to her by March 31. Heidi wants to leap over all of the nonsense and get the POTUS buy in. The pillars of her transforming plan are : 1) Multi-use principle - NIAID has already been pushing for this in the sense of partnering with industry to develop multi-use products and advance new platform technologies; 2) Collaborations, Partnerships and Cooperatives; 3) regulatory innovation and Advancement of regulatory Science; 4)Product Development and manufacturing services; 5) End-to-end Multidisciplinary Project Management (see entire document in records of My Documents). Feb. 10, 2010 - We (the HHS team) brief Bill Corr (Deputy Secretary). Again conservative concern. I am all for Heidi's initiative. These people just do not understand how important it is to get personal support of the POTUS (remember PEPFAR). Again, multiple conference calls with Heidi fine-tuning the document. Richard Hatchett (who actually works for me in DAIT, but is detailed to Heidi) and Heidi often call me late at night for help in getting this group off their asses. They are afraid that she will promise too much. She keeps saying (and I totally believe her) that we are not going to promise the POTUS anything, we just need to get his buy-in and then we will implement what we can. Feb. 11, 2010 - HHS team briefs Secretary Sebelius over the phone. She is smart, but clueless about what all this means. Nicki Lurie is inarticulate in explaining it to her. Nonetheless Heidi is going to give it a go with the POTUS even though she is terribly frustrated with the HHS people except for me. My time has been totally consumed with this despite the shutdown of everything with the snow.