Many in leadership at federal health agencies have been fired
The Nation is Coming Out: The Downsizing Doesn’t Matter: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is Ready to Lose It
It’s the speech of the person. Kennedy claims that health care services won’t be harmed by the downsizing, but he is wrong, and everyone who is paying attention knows it.
Frank Pallon Jr., ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on Tuesday at an oversight hearing that the Trump Administration had launched an “unprecedented attack” on the federal health workforce.
More than 500 employees at the National Institute of Health have received notices. About 1,200 jobs were expected to be cut at the agency. Many of the NIH cuts appear to involve communications, IT and other support staff. Several high-rankingNIH officials appear to be on their way out.
“Despair, I think, is the only fitting word,” said one NIH employee describing the mood at the agency Tuesday. The person asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.
Several other leaders received the same offer including Renate Myles, director of communication for NIH, Dr. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Dr. Shannon Zenk, director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and Dr. Diana Bianchi, the director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, according to several NIH employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Some directors were offered the chance to transfer to the Indian Health Service, a division of HHS that provides medical care to Indigenous people in the United States. (The HHS is the parent agency of the NIH.) An e-mail obtained by Nature states that the Department of Health and Human Settlements is looking to move some people around. “This underserved community deserves the highest quality of service, and HHS needs individuals like you to deliver that service,” it says, offering reassignment to locations such as Alaska, Montana and Oklahoma.
“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished,” Dr. Robert Califf, who served as FDA commissioner twice, and stepped down in January, wrote on LinkedIn. He was “overwhelmed” by the messages about the staff cuts and the fact that the agency leaders who were most knowledgeable about safety had been let go.
The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it planned to dismiss 10,000 people. The Trump administration’s Fork in the Road offer and early retirement have already resulted in 10,000 people leaving the agencies.
On Thursday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that the layoffs were intended to reduce “bureaucratic sprawl.” “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” he said.
The dean of the Brown University School of Public Health told NPR in an interview that they had never seen anything like this before.
“We rely on our CDC for things like tracking down disease outbreaks. We rely on NIH for research into new treatments and tests and vaccines. At this moment, whether those will continue to be effective has really been put into question. We don’t know what the implications of all of this will be. I’m worried that what we’re going to see is more people getting sick, more disease outbreaks and infrastructure that is going to be less and less capable of responding to those threats.”
An official at the FDA’s center for drug evaluation and research says more than 800 people have been laid off, with many fearing reprisal for sharing information. This part of the agency is responsible for new drug approvals as well as monitoring unexpected side effects after approval and making label changes.
When Did Nature Tell Us About Humpty Dumpty’s First e-mail to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases?
He wrote that he believed history would see this as a huge mistake. I won’t be mad if I’m proven correct, but there is not a good reason to treat people this way. The new leadership will be interesting to hear about how they intend to bring Humpty Dumpty back together.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute of Nursing Research were all informed late on 31 March. Together, these leaders were in charge of US$9 billion in funding at the NIH.
When asked for a response, the NIH directed Nature to the HHS for comment. A staff member of an agency who was not authorized to speak with the press said Renate Myles, the top communications officer, was placed on administrative leave. Nature asked the HHS questions by publication time, but they did not respond.
In his first email to agency staff on April 1st, Bhattacharya wrote that the reductions in the workforce would have a profound effect on the administrative functions of the NIds.
The US Department of Health and Human Services is planning to move some people around, an e-mail obtained by Nature showed. Several NIH leaders were offered the chance to transfer to the Indian Health Service, the division of HHS that provides medical care to Indigenous people in the US, the email stated. Earlier, the Trump administration announced plans to dismiss 10,000 people.