Requests from center directors for early or even simultaneous notice of the cuts were ignored by HHS, according to one senior official, who said leadership was learning about layoffs and division closings from reports in the media and relying on their staffers to let them know if they received termination notices.
Experts warned that wholesale staffing cuts would be hazardous to maintaining public health.
“Making America Healthy Again sounds great, but that’s not possible when HHS is hollowed out with major staff and funding cuts,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
“Loss of career scientists will have long-term consequences for public health and safety,” Gostin said. “It will be very difficult to rebuild the public health workforce. In my view, these cuts are dangerous and shortsighted. Public health is invisible but it saves lives every day.”
Earlier, NBC obtained a memo that revealed that HHS workers would be notified as early as Friday whether they would be laid off.
HHS said Thursday that 28 divisions in the health department contain “redundant units,” and that the restructuring plan will consolidate them into 15 divisions.
“We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for Healthy America or AHA,” Kennedy said in a post on X.
Among the agencies set to be folded into the AHA include the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration, which includes a program focused on HIV treatment.
Meanwhile, the divisions being eliminated or reduced at the CDC include those focused on global health, domestic HIV prevention and injury prevention, such as gun violence, HHS said Thursday.
In total, the CDC will decrease its workforce by about 2,400 employees, Nixon said Thursday. The administration will also move the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which manages the nation’s emergency stockpile, from HHS to the CDC, he said.
Also facing big cuts are the FDA, NIH and CMS.
The FDA will decrease its workforce by about 3,500 full-time employees; the NIH headcount will be reduced by 1,200 employees; and CMS will lose about 300 workers.
Nixon said the reorganization of CMS will not affect Medicare and Medicaid, nor will it affect the timeline for the FDA’s review of drugs, medical devices and food.
The latest expected mass layoffs are separate from earlier attempts by the Trump administration to fire thousands of probationary employees at the CDC and other federal agencies. Two federal judges have since ordered the temporary reinstatement of many of those affected workers.
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