Glossary
Response-management vocabulary used on the Health Response Hub.
- 4W
- Who is doing What, Where, by When. The OCHA standard for tracking response activity. On the Hub, each claim is a 4W record.
- Affected state
- A U.S. state or territory included in the geographic scope of a declared incident. Drives filtering, notifications, and reporting.
- ASPR
- Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (HHS). Leads federal public health and medical preparedness and response.
- ASTHO
- Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. National non-profit representing public health agencies of U.S. states, territories, freely associated states, and the District of Columbia.
- Claim
- A partner's commitment to fulfill some or all of a facility's request. Moves through Planned, In Progress, Completed, Verified, or Withdrawn.
- CMS
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Maintains the NPPES registry the Hub uses for NPI verification.
- Declaration of Emergency
- Formal proclamation by federal, state, tribal, or local authority that unlocks emergency authorities, funding, and mutual aid. Federal declarations are tracked via the FEMA API.
- Demobilization
- Wind-down of active response operations. A specific partner deployment state.
- EOC
- Emergency Operations Center. Physical or virtual hub from which a jurisdiction directs response.
- ESF-8
- Emergency Support Function 8: Public Health and Medical Services under the National Response Framework. Led federally by HHS / ASPR; mirrored at state and local levels.
- FEMA
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. Coordinates federal response under the Stafford Act; declarations feed the Hub's situational summary.
- FQHC
- Federally Qualified Health Center. Community-based, federally-funded health center that serves underserved populations.
- HCC
- Healthcare Coalition. Region-level group of healthcare and response partners that plans and exercises together. ASPR funds HCCs nationally.
- HRA
- Health Response Alliance. The non-profit that builds and runs this platform.
- Incident
- A named event the Hub is tracking (for example, "Hurricane Tropical Storm Henri, Sept 2026"). Each incident has a start date, affected states, status, and a roll-up of facility status, requests, and claims.
- Mobilization
- A partner's decision to engage in a response and the preparation that follows. Specific deployment state.
- NACHC
- National Association of Community Health Centers. Membership organization for FQHCs and similar community-based providers.
- NAFC
- National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. Membership organization for free and charitable clinics nationwide.
- NPI
- National Provider Identifier. Ten-digit identifier issued by CMS for healthcare providers. The Hub uses NPI to verify facility identity against the federal NPPES registry.
- NPPES
- National Plan and Provider Enumeration System. CMS-maintained database of NPI records. Public API; the Hub queries it for autofill.
- OCHA
- United Nations Office for the Facilitation of Humanitarian Affairs. Originator of the 4W framing the Hub uses for claim tracking.
- Operational period
- A defined work cycle within a response, commonly 12 or 24 hours. Facilities are expected to re-report status at the start of each.
- PII
- Personally Identifiable Information. Patient PII never appears on the Hub. Staff names and contact information are stored only at the organization-account level.
- Recovery
- Post-acute phase of a response focused on restoring services and supporting long-term needs. Specific deployment state.
- Request
- A facility's submission describing an unmet operational need. Has a category, quantity, priority, and free-text detail. Open until claimed and fulfilled.
- Situational summary
- Twice-daily narrative published by HRA that blends FEMA declarations, public-health RSS feeds, and platform activity. Visible without login on the landing page.
- SITREP
- Situational Report. Periodic written summary of the operating picture. The Hub treats SITREP as a document type.
- Substitute
- An acceptable alternative to a requested item (for example, KN95 in place of N95). Stating substitutes on a request speeds matching.
- Suspension
- Temporary block on a previously-approved organization. The org's users keep accounts but cannot view dashboards, browse needs, or submit claims until reinstated.
- Ushahidi
- Open-source crisis-mapping platform that powers the public map at /hub. Origin: the platform was first built during the 2008 Kenyan election crisis.
- Vetted partner
- An organization HRA has reviewed for insurance, references, and operational readiness, and approved to claim needs.
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HRA staff respond within four hours during business hours, faster during a declared incident.
Page last updated Jul 14, 2026