The United States has made some critical progress in beginning to measure the capabilities through the use of metrics and other evaluation tools. This action was called for by the lead author as part of the National Advisory Committee on Children and Terrorism after a lag period of relatively few evaluations except some capability instruments by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). A recent review by Drexel University's Center for Public Health Readiness and Communication found some other evaluations with merit that correlated with national public health expert concern about preparedness. Recently, the CDC, as part of their larger U.S. cabinet, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) began to work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Securities (DHS) National Response Plan experts and other collaborators to develop a set of critical capabilities that are part of a larger DHS initiative to measure Target Capabilities. Some public health experts in the U.S. do not see this trend towards capabilities over capacity as necessarily a great improvement, but it promises to track progress potentially more reliably and more often than in the past. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether or not such Target Capabilities and more importantly, the anticipated decreased funding stream for “public health preparedness” will fully prepare some key sectors of our populations for various emergency situations