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for the development of alternative models to elucidate the interdependencies of the U.S.
system of government and the public health system to address national goals.
The organization of the paper is as follows. A brief introduction to the DHHS
functions under the Department of Homeland Security is provided. An overview of major
themes concerning the advantages and limitations of reorganization put forward by
political scientists and public administration scholars follows. A qualitative analysis of
the legislative language governing the health and human services roles and
responsibilities for counter bioterrorism policy, presented in a previous paper, provides
substantial evidence of the technical contributions of the states in the design,
development and amendment of the DHS, the largest government reorganization within
the last fifty-years. It concludes that, the institutional interdependency of federal-state
relations that are inherent to the U.S. public health system constitutes a patent model of
collaborative federalism. In so doing, the author provides preliminary empirical evidence,
with both theoretical and practical significance, to advance the notion that states and
federal government worked in consort to enable Secretary of Health and Human Services
Tommy Thompson to retain primary authority and jurisdiction over the unique health and
human services dimensions of bioterrorism-related activities within DHHS. An outcome
that is arguably unanticipated in the current administrative drive for centralization and
control. This policy outcome provides new evidence of an extended theoretical model of
collaborative federalism applied to study intergovernmental relations and used to
demonstrated the fundamental role and impact of explicit federal and state roles and
responsibilities for advancing national goals and counter bioterrorism policy and
administration objectives.
Convention