By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) disorders—including mental illness and substance use disorders—are at the heart of several ongoing national crises and affect every U.S. population group, community, and neighborhood. Existing infrastructure responds to these crises predominantly with treatment and recovery, or addressing MEB disorders once they already exist, rather than working to prevent them. Available prevention services are insufficiently funded, fragmented, and better developed for substance use prevention than mental health promotion and for children and youth than for other age groups. Improved prevention services could help people thrive, avert the harms that accompany MEB disorders, and reduce the burden on an already overtaxed system. In response to a request from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) convened a committee of experts to develop a blueprint, including actionable steps for building and sustaining an infrastructure, for delivering prevention interventions for behavioral health disorders. The committee’s report, Blueprint for a National Prevention Infrastructure for Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders, presents its conclusions and recommendations. The committee asserts that the existing MEB disorder prevention infrastructure—partially present in other systems like education, health care, and human services—provides a foundation to build on and that creating another system would be inefficient. Instead, the report’s conclusions and recommendations focus on strengthening, coordinating, and funding existing structures to close gaps, prepare workers, and maximize available data to deliver needed interventions .

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2025. 384p

By United States. Government Accountability Office

From the document: "Critical infrastructure provides essential functions--such as supplying water, generating energy, and producing food--that underpin American society. Disruption or destruction of the nation's critical infrastructure could have debilitating effects. CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] is the national coordinator for infrastructure protection. The William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 includes a provision for GAO [Government Accountability Office] to report on the effectiveness of sector risk management agencies in carrying out responsibilities set forth in the act. This report addresses (1) how the act changed agencies' responsibilities, and the actions agencies have reported taking to address them; and (2) the extent to which CISA has identified and undertaken efforts to help agencies implement their responsibilities set forth in the act. GAO analyzed the act and relevant policy directives, collected written responses from all 16 sectors using a standardized information collection tool, reviewed other DHS documents, and interviewed CISA officials."

Wasginton D.C. United States. Government Accountability Office. 2023.

By Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency:

From the Introduction: "Infrastructure is the backbone of our communities, providing not only critical services (such as water, transportation, electricity, and communications), but also the means for health, safety, and economic growth. These systems often extend beyond our communities providing service to entire regions and contributing to the delivery of National Critical Functions [hyperlink]. Given the vital importance of infrastructure to our social and economic well-being, it is imperative we ensure our networks are strong, secure, and resilient. [...] The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) developed the Infrastructure Resilience Planning Framework (IRPF) to provide an approach for localities, regions, and the private sector to work together to plan for the security and resilience of critical infrastructure services in the face of multiple threats and changes. The primary audience for the IRPF is state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and associated regional organizations; however, the IRPF can be flexibly used by any organization seeking to enhance their resilience planning. It provides resources for integrating critical infrastructure into planning as well as a framework for working regionally and across systems and jurisdictions."

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. Nov. 2022. 56p.