‘It’s a bloodbath’: Massive wave of job cuts underway at US health agencies

By Nick Valencia, Brenda Goodman, Meg Tirrell, Tami Luhby and Sean Lyngaas, CNN

(CNN) — A massive wave of job cuts got underway at US health agencies Tuesday, with some employees receiving early-morning emails saying their jobs were eliminated and some unable to access the building when they arrived at work.

It was not immediately clear how many employees had received notice Tuesday morning. The US Department of Health and Human Services has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last week that 10,000 full-time employees would be cut on top of thousands who had already left and probationary employees currently on leave. He said the changes would make fighting chronic disease the priority and reduce “bureaucratic sprawl.” Kennedy promised that the department would do more with less.

After weeks of worry from agency staffers, job cuts — known as a reduction in force, or RIF — were sweeping across offices at multiple agencies, hitting leadership, longtime staffers, scientists, administrators and communications staff.

“It’s a bloodbath,” one US Food and Drug Administration employee said.

“These cuts to agency experts and programs leave our country less safe, less prepared and without the necessary talent and resources to respond to health threats,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Biden administration, said Tuesday.

In a post on LinkedIn, former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said, “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.

“I believe that history will see this a huge mistake,” Califf wrote. “I will be glad if I’m proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way.”

Details start to emerge on cuts

The totality of the cuts was not clear Tuesday, with many workers waiting for emails — or waiting to get into buildings, uncertain whether their badges would work. Even supervisors weren’t sure who was being eliminated, one senior official at the CDC said.

Cuts at the CDC slashed divisions that work on workplace health and safety, HIV, injury prevention, reproductive health, smoking and violence prevention, among others. Despite Kennedy’s focus on chronic diseases, CDC employees described broad cuts at the agency’s National Center for Chronic Disease and Health Promotion. The offices at the CDC and the NIH that handle Freedom of Information Act requests were also cut.

Several senior leaders at the CDC were reassigned to other roles, and some were told they would have to relocate. Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was offered reassignment to Indian Health Service and would move to an area such as Alaska, New Mexico, Minnesota or Alaska.

At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the entire Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights – which handles issues of diversity, civil rights and a supportive work environment – was let go, according to a former HHS employee.

The notices sent to staffers in the office suggested that they contact the former director of the office if they had a complaint — but that director died late last year, Karen Shields, a former CMS executive, posted on LinkedIn on Tuesday morning. CNN has obtained a copy of the notice.

“The dissolution of the office is disturbing but was expected. The referral to a woman who died over four months ago is a result of a significant lack of collaboration and consultation with the career team at the agency who would have helped to prevent this disgrace,” Shields wrote.

Also, CMS cut all or nearly all of the Office of Minority Health, the former HHS employee said. The website of the office, which aims to improve the health of racial and ethnic minority groups through health policies and programs, was not working Tuesday, although it had been operational as recently as Saturday, according to web archives.

The office, which was created by Congress, also focused on rural health, former CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said Friday.

“We have health disparities, and we need to be measuring what is happening so that we can address those,” she said, noting that the office looked at issues such as diet and diabetes.

At the FDA, staffers in the Office of New Drugs, the Office of Policy & International Engagement and the Office of Regulatory Programs were among those receiving notice. The agency’s entire press office – the group that shares material with news media – received notice and was put on administrative leave, according to a person familiar with the cut who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about it.

A RIF notice received by one FDA employee on Tuesday included performance ratings that were incorrectly low, meaning the severance pay offered was lower than it would be for the ratings they previously received, the employee told CNN.

Multiple other colleagues who received the RIF had the same issue, the FDA employee said, making them uncertain whether they should sign the inaccurate paperwork. The employee said they couldn’t tell if the inaccuracy was deliberate or an honest mistake.

“Everybody’s got families and mortgages and real-life concerns,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned that being named would hurt their job prospects.

Also terminated was the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. The program provides about $4 billion to help millions of Americans with their heating and cooling bills.

“It will definitely hamper program operations,” Wolfe said, noting that he doesn’t see how the agency can “allocate the remaining $387 million in funds for this year without federal staff. The program could well grind to a halt.”

Staff of the HHS Administration for Children and Families – which provides support for child care, child welfare, early childhood development, family violence prevention, refugee resettlement, homeless teens and Head Start programs, among others – also received notice Tuesday.

“We’re devastated for our colleagues and friends who have lost their careers, and we’re really feeling primarily devastated for our programs that we care so much about. In the regional offices, we’re the ones who work directly with the people — the states, the territories, the tribes, the people that we serve — and we’re just abruptly cut off from that work and our relationships,” said one employee in the administration who received notice Tuesday.

“Our concerns are that by gutting these offices, it can make child care less safe, less affordable.”

Workforce to shrink by 20,000

HHS announced last week that its reduction in force would cut 10,000 full-time employees in addition to 10,000 employees who’ve left voluntarily, shrinking the workforce from about 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000. About 5,200 probationary workers who have been in their positions less than a year or two were also terminated last month. Most are on temporary administrative leave as their fate winds its way through federal courts.

HHS said last week cuts would include:

• 3,500 full-time employees at the US Food and Drug Administration, not affecting drug, medical device or food reviewers or inspectors
• 2,400 employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• 1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health due to centralizing procurement, human resources and communications
• 300 employees at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Kennedy announced the cuts as part of a sweeping reorganization that would move or cut several parts of the federal health workforce, including the creation of a new Administration for a Healthy America, which it said would combine the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

CNN’s Ross Levitt and Rene Marsh contributed to this report.

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