BioRadar Co-Founder Dr. Nikki Romanik published an op-ed in Think Global Health on August 7, 2025, warning that the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy — the office she helped build and lead — has been gutted, leaving the United States dangerously exposed.

The Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy was created by congressional mandate through the PREVENT Pandemics Act in 2022. By the end of June 2025, all remaining staff had departed, leaving the office dormant without a director.

Dr. Romanik writes from direct experience — she served as Special Assistant to the President, Deputy Director, and Chief of Staff of OPPR, helping stand up the office and coordinate federal responses to pandemics, outbreaks, and high-consequence biological threats.

The piece argues that this institutional void has emerged at precisely the wrong moment — as avian influenza continues jumping between species, climate-driven disease emergence accelerates, and the gap between biological threat detection and response capability continues to widen.

It is exactly this gap that BioRadar was built to help close.

Read the full piece in Think Global Health