Thousands of workers at nation's health agencies brace for mass layoffs
[April 01, 2025]
By AMANDA SEITZ and MATTHEW PERRONE
WASHINGTON (AP) — As they readied to leave work Monday, some workers at
the Food and Drug Administration were told to pack their laptops and
prepare for the possibility that they wouldn’t be back, according to an
email obtained by The Associated Press.
Nervous employees — roughly 82,000 across the nation's public health
agencies — waited to see whether pink slips would arrive in their
inboxes. The mass dismissals have been expected since Secretary Robert
F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week a massive reorganization that will
result in 20,000 fewer jobs at the Department of Health and Human
Services. About 10,000 will be eliminated through layoffs.
The email sent to some at the FDA said staffers should check their email
for a possible notice that their jobs would be eliminated, which would
also halt their access to government buildings. An FDA employee shared
the email with AP on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t
authorized to disclose internal agency matters.
Kennedy has criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient
“sprawling bureaucracy” and said the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly
budget “has failed to improve the health of Americans.” He plans to
streamline operations and fold entire agencies — such as the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — into a new
Administration for a Healthy America.
Anand Parekh, who worked worked at the department during the Bush and
Obama administrations and is now the chief medical adviser at the
Bipartisan Policy Center, wonders what kind of analysis Kennedy has done
to arrive at job cuts. He questioned how closely Kennedy could examine
each of the agencies after spending just over a month as health
secretary.
“One would hope that as they made these cuts, they really did a deep
dive,” Parekh said. “It’s not quite clear from a transparency
perspective how they got from where they were to here.”
On Friday, dozens of federal health employees working to stop infectious
diseases from spreading were told they'd be put on leave.
Several current and former federal officials told the AP that the Office
of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy was hollowed out that night.
Some employees posted on LinkedIn about the office emptying. And an HIV
and public health expert who works directly with the office was emailed
a notice saying that all staff had been asked to leave. The expert spoke
to the AP on condition of anonymity over fears of losing future work on
the issue.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks
during an event announcing proposed changes to SNAP and food dye
legislation, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Martinsburg, W. Va. (AP
Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
 Several of the office’s advisory
committees — including the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and
others that advise on HIV/AIDs response — have had their meetings
canceled.
“It puts a number of important efforts to improve the health of
Americans at risk,” said Dr. Robert H. Hopkins Jr., the former chair
of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, an advisory committee of
the office.
An HHS official said the office is not being closed but that the
department is seeking to consolidate the work and reduce
redundancies.
Also, as of Monday, a website for the Office of Minority Health was
disabled, with an error message saying the page “does not exist.”
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts have begun at state
and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to
pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds.
Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but
some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs
that stand to be eliminated because of lost funding, “some of them
overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel
Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and
City Health Officials.
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Associated Press writer Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed
reporting.
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