In June 2017, Daniel M. Gerstein, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and former acting Under Secretary and Deputy Under Secretary of the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate, said, "In the last 40 to 60 years, hundreds of new diseases have cropped up across the world ... The country and the world have not proven ready to handle a true public health crisis." Describing the NBACC's value to science, Gerstein said, "Back in 2001, we did not have this facility, and it literally took months in order to do the forensics analysis of samples ... they had to outsource ... to 12 different facilities to get everything analyzed back then. Today, the NBACC can do those forensic analyses in a couple days."