Layoffs begin at agencies responsible for research, tracking disease and regulating food

Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people.

The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues.

At the National Institutes of Health, the world's leading health and medical agency, the layoffs occurred as its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, began his first day of work.

"The revolution begins today!" Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Bhattacharya and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

Kennedy's post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices.

Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for almost half the country.

The plan will consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.

The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers.

HHS said layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually — about 0.1% — from the department’s $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.

Some staffers began getting layoff notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their job was eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked.

At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the NIH's 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.

At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The notices came as the FDA's tobacco chief, Brian King, was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs were eliminated.

“If you make it virtually impossible to create and draft policy, then you are eviscerating the role of the center,” Mitch Zeller, the FDA’s former tobacco chief, said in an interview. “From a public health perspective it makes absolutely no sense.”

"The FDA as we've known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed," said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.

The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump stripped workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.

"They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy," Murray said Friday.

The CDC has not provided a breakdown of cuts, but employees in different parts of the organization described to the AP extensive layoffs in programs that track asthma, air pollution, smoking, gun violence, reproductive health, climate change and other health threats.

The intent seems to be to create "a much smaller, infectious disease agency," but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC's director during President Barack Obama's administration, said he is particularly concerned about cuts to the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health and the agency's Global Health Center.

"Weakening tobacco prevention is a gift to Big Tobacco that would guarantee more addiction, disease, and death," Frieden said, while cuts to the CDC's global disease detection work will cost lives.

HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesday's mass firings, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.

• 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
• 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
• 1,200 jobs at the NIH.
• 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.

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