One year later.(bioterrorism protection)

After almost a year of frenetic effort assessing our nation's vulnerability to a terrorist attack, significant steps are being taken to increase public safety. In mid-June, President Bush signed the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, which allocates nearly $5 billion to boost the work of federal, state, and local governments. Along with strengthening the nation's counter-terrorism infrastructure, the new law prescribes an integrated plan for improving the government's ability to protect the food and water supply and to distribute vaccines and drugs in case of future attacks.

But more needs to be done, says a panel of 118 leading doctors, engineers, and scientists brought together by the National Research Council (NRC), the operating arm of the nonprofit National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, D.C. The panel's six-month assessment, released shortly after the signing of the bioterrorism bill (although not in response to it), details ongoing security challenges.

On another front, Congress is considering mental-health-parity legislation that discourages inequitable-treatment limitations and closes the loopholes some insurers use to set higher co-payments and deductibles for mental-health benefits than they set for physical-health benefits. The proposed reform may help the increased number of Americans seeking such care in a post-Sept. 11 world.

Our report highlights changes that have occurred in key areas and others that the NRC panel says need to take place. We also outline what consumers can do to protect themselves.

FOOD AND WATER SAFEGUARDS

The new bioterrorism-preparedness law authorizes money for hiring hundreds of food inspectors. Officials will focus especially on imported foods, since border inspections have been inadequate, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says. The bioterrorism law also calls for officials to assess the vulnerability of community water systems that serve more than 3,300 people, and to create or revise an emergency-response plan.

Still needed. The NRC report calls for new tools for surveillance and threat detection, and for an early-warning system that would quickly disseminate information from doctors' offices and hospital emergency rooms to city and state health departments.