The move elevates a roughly 1,000-person office within the department — known as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR — into a separate division, charged with coordinating the nation’s response to health emergencies, according to seven people briefed on the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, and a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The reorganization allows the division “to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities,” Dawn O’Connell, who leads ASPR and would run the new division, wrote staff on Wednesday afternoon. The emailed memo was shared with The Post.

The creation of the new Administration of Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is expected to be phased in over two years, comes at a time of growing concern about the federal government’s ability to respond to health emergencies — whether to a once-in-a-century pandemic driven by a novel virus like SARS-CoV-2, to an outbreak of a long-identified pathogen such as monkeypox, which has established treatments and vaccines.