Mass layoffs are underway at the nation's public health agencies
[April 02, 2025]
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department
received notices Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated, part of
a sweeping overhaul designed to vastly shrink the agencies responsible
for protecting and promoting Americans’ health.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and
senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key
experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug
approvals and other issues.
“The revolution begins today!” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest
hires: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes
of Health and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration
commissioner. Kennedy's post came just hours after employees began
receiving emailed layoff notices. He later wrote, “Our hearts go out to
those who have lost their jobs,” but said that the department needs to
be “recalibrated" to emphasize disease prevention.
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 nearly half the country.
The plan would 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.
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.
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. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in
Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is
based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
Some staffers began getting termination notices in their work inboxes at
5 a.m., while others found out their jobs had been eliminated after
standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and
Atlanta to see if their badges still worked.
Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned
away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools' Day joke. Adding to
the confusion, some layoff notices included instructions to file equal
employment complaints to a person who had died in November.
At the NIH, 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 that 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 least nine high-level CDC directors were placed on leave and were
also offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service. Some public
health experts outside the agency saw it as a bid to get veteran agency
leaders to resign.
At CDC, union officials said programs were eliminated because of the
layoffs focused on smoking, lead poisoning, gun violence, asthma and air
quality, and occupational safety and health. The entire office that
handles Freedom of Information Act requests was shuttered. Infectious
disease programs took a hit, too, including programs that fight
outbreaks in other countries and labs focused on HIV and hepatitis in
the U.S. and staff trying to eliminate tuberculosis.
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 was
removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen
press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their
jobs would be eliminated.
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People protest outside of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were
announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
 “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 moved
to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and
other agencies throughout the government.
“Congress and citizens must join us in pushing back,” said Everett
Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government
Employees. “Our health, safety, and security depend on a strong,
fully staffed public health system.”
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 intent of cuts to the CDC 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.
Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, where Trump's Republican administration wants to avoid the
appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover
roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
However, the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing
much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not
part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump's
Republican administration has sought to end.
“This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are
and meeting their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned
last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning 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 money.
Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand
to be eliminated, “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.
A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration
on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on
the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos.
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, the world’s leading medical research
agency.
__300 jobs at the CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act
marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
___
Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew
Perrone in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed.
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