US health department to lay off 10,000 workers in drastic overhaul under Kennedy

WASHINGTON – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will cut about 10,000 full-time jobs and close half of its regional offices, it said on March 27, a major overhaul of the department under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The latest job cuts, and about 10,000 recent voluntary departures, will reduce the number of full-time employees at the department to 62,000 from 82,000, the department said.

Mr Kennedy, in a department statement, said: “We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organisation with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”

US President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative,

have been gutting agencies

as part of an effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

The HHS plan involves cutting 3,500 full-time employees at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the department said in a fact sheet breaking down the cuts, adding that the cuts would not affect inspectors or drug, medical device or food reviewers.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will see 2,400 staff cut and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, currently an independent HHS agency with 1,000 employees, folded into it.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will see a reduction of 1,200 employees across its 27 institutes and centres, the breakdown showed. The Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services was comparatively spared, with a reduction of about 300 people.

Mr Nate Brought, the recently departed former director of NIH’s executive secretariat, said: “The only way to cut that high of a percentage of our staff, along with the 35 per cent contracting cuts that are being directed, is to drastically scale back what NIH does across the board.”

As part of the restructuring, the department’s 10 regional offices will be cut down to five and its 28 divisions consolidated into 15, including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, which combines offices that address addiction, toxic substances and occupational safety into one central office.

The AHA will contain the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The changes centralise functions such as communications, human resources, information technology and policy planning that currently spread out across several health agencies, including powerful ones such as the FDA, CDC and NIH, which have traditionally operated somewhat independently of HHS and even the White House, despite reporting to the health secretary.

There are no additional cuts currently planned, the department said. REUTERS