Johns Hopkins Awarded $1.5M Department of Defense grant to strengthen U.S. drug supply chain resilience

The U.S. relies on a global network for its prescription drug supply. Yet concerns over the quality, transparency, and resilience of global pharmaceutical supply chains continue to grow. A project led by Associate Professor Mariana Socal was recently awarded a $1.5 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to enhance the resilience of the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain. The research is part of a broader DoD grant awarded to the Uniformed Services University’s Center for Health Services Research to inform federal decision-making on sourcing, investment, and regulatory strategies, ensuring that critical medications remain accessible for U.S. military and civilian populations.

“The pandemic laid bare the vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s public health system overall and the pharmaceutical drug supply chain in particular,” says Socal, who has faculty appointments in both the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. “During the pandemic, there were significant disruptions in manufacturing and distribution of a wide range of pharmaceuticals that are used to treat everything from cardiovascular diseases to viral infections, and others.”

The newly funded project focuses on developing actionable policy solutions to enhance the resilience of the U.S. prescription drug supply chain. Collaborators include Gerard Anderson, Joshua Sharfstein, and Jeromie Ballreich, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Maqbool Dada, Tinglong Dai, and Mohammad Ali Yazdi, from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School; and Jeremy Greene from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. This research builds on the Johns Hopkins Prescription Drug Supply Chain Data Dashboard, a tool developed by the team with the support of a Johns Hopkins NEXUS research award granted to Socal in 2024. A first-of-its-kind initiative, the dashboard combines structured and unstructured data sources to provide real-time insights into the global supply chains manufacturing and distributing prescription drugs for the U.S. market.

“These efforts are needed to fully understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of the complicated and interconnected pharmaceutical supply chains,” says Socal. “Millions of Americans—including vulnerable populations like children and older adults—depend on prescription drugs to survive. We must do everything possible to protect their health and quality of life by preventing drug shortages and increasing supply transparency to prevent disruptions.”

In addition to deepening research efforts at Johns Hopkins, this grant will support a new collaboration with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Together with NASEM, Johns Hopkins will host a public-facing workshop on prescription drug supply chain resilience at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., in October 2025. The workshop will convene federal agencies, congressional staff, industry leaders, and public health experts to develop policy solutions through a make-buy-invest strategic framework. Discussions will center on domestic production, strategic investments, and regulatory oversight to safeguard critical drugs vital to national security.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management website.