DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Office of the Secretary

21 CFR Ch. I

25 CFR Ch. V

42 CFR Chs. I-V

45 CFR Subtitle A; Subtitle B, Chs. II, III, and XIII

Regulatory Agenda

AGENCY: Office of the Secretary, HHS.

ACTION: Semiannual Regulatory Agenda.

SUMMARY: The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 and Executive Order (EO) 12866 require the semiannual issuance of an inventory of rulemaking actions under development throughout the Department, offering for public review summarized information about forthcoming regulatory actions.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ann C. Agnew, Executive Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201; (202) 690-5627.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the Federal government's lead agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves. HHS enhances the health and well-being of Americans by promoting effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.

This Agenda presents the regulatory activities that the Department expects to undertake in the foreseeable future to advance this mission. HHS has an agency-wide effort to support the Agenda's purpose of encouraging more effective public participation in the regulatory process. For example, to encourage public participation, we regularly update our regulatory webpage (http://www.HHS.gov/regulations) which includes links to HHS rules currently open for public comment, and also provides a "regulations toolkit" with background information on regulations, the commenting process, how public comments influence the development of a rule, and how the public can provide effective comments. HHS also actively encourages meaningful public participation in its retrospective review of regulations through a comment form on the HHS retrospective review webpage (http://www.HHS.gov/RetrospectiveReview).

The rulemaking abstracts included in this paper issue of the Federal Register cover, as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, those prospective HHS rulemakings likely to have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. The Department's complete Regulatory Agenda is accessible online at http://www.RegInfo.gov.

NAME: Ann C. Agnew,

Executive Secretary to the Department.