Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $7 billion to enhance state and local preparedness for bioterrorism attacks, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and other large-scale public health emergencies. A central component of this effort involves the ability to dispense antibiotics and other life-saving medical countermeasures to large populations under short timelines. This report presents recommended standards for points of dispensing (or PODs), locations where the public would receive life-saving antibiotics or other medical countermeasures during a large-scale public health emergency. The standards, which are designed to apply to widely divergent jurisdictions, rely on expert panel evaluations, current POD planning practices, and computer-modeled scenarios