The Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP) provides funding to eligible state and local governments to close known preparedness capability gaps, encourage innovative regional solutions to issues related to catastrophic incidents, and build on existing regional preparedness efforts. This document outlines key changes for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 RCPGP.
Strategic Priorities
The focus for the FY 2022 RCPGP is investing in the following core capabilities: Community Resilience, Housing, and Long-term Vulnerability Reduction. Pandemic preparedness and logistics/supply chain management are no longer program priorities. Within the above focus areas, Applicants are expected to address the strategic priorities of Equity, Climate Resilience, and/or Readiness.
Equity Considerations: Project Narrative and Scoring
Significant updates were made to the application project narrative requirements and evaluation criteria to address equity considerations:
- Project proposals will be measured against core capability gaps identified through relevant Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment/Stakeholder Preparedness Review reports and the potential impact the proposed project will have on improving those capabilities. Additionally, the scoring rubric that will be used to evaluate project proposals includes various qualitative and quantitative criteria relating to equity and climate resilience.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) data will be used to evaluate how well a project addresses equity considerations. Applicants must identify the jurisdictions involved and/or supported by the project. This information will be used to determine the number of Census tracts that represent communities with a “High” SVI ranking (.60 - .79) or “Very High” SVI ranking (.80 – 1.0).
The Overview, Priorities, and Objectives section has also been substantially revised to include a significant emphasis on equity. In addition, the project scoring rubric has been updated to provide much greater weight to project proposals that give serious consideration to equity. Please see Appendix C of the FY 2022 RCPGP Notice of Funding Opportunity for more details on the scoring rubric.