Commentary: The Critical Infrastructure Behind Public Health Resilience

When we think about public health preparedness and national resilience, hospitals, medical professionals, emergency response systems and critical medicines come to mind. But another essential part of that infrastructure receives far less attention: the packaging systems that help keep critical products safe, usable and available throughout the supply chain. Packaging often is treated as something that surrounds a product after the important work of manufacturing the product has been done. In reality, it is part of the infrastructure that allows medicines, sterile medical supplies, food and other essential products to reach people safely and reliably every day. Flexible packaging plays an important role across these applications, providing barriers, protection, portability and other performance characteristics designed around the needs of the product. As policymakers consider regulations affecting packaging materials and manufacturing, those essential functions need to be part of the equation.

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