What will the cuts at the Centers for Disease Control do to global programs?
HHS Cuts Spending on Contracts: On Top of Laundered Health Contracts, a Public Citizen Observer Report
Andrew Nixon told NPR that the Department of Health and Human Services will have to reduce spending on contracts by at least a third.
Cleaning services, computer support, and specialized equipment for medical research may be included in spending on contracts, according to Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at Public Citizen. Functions that are not large enough to have full-time staff are often covered in the contracts.
With health agencies reeling from layoffs, these spending cuts will further weaken public health in this country, said Steinbrook, via e-mail. He called the cuts “arbitrary and senseless.”
Last week, 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.
“This is at best getting water from a stone,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, via e-mail. “They seem to be on a quest to totally destroy the infrastructure of the nation’s public health system. The parts of the health system that give the best value for prevention and wellness are the ones that are going to be cut.
Source: On top of layoffs, HHS ordered to cut 35% of spending on contracts
The Future of Global Health Under Trump’s “Fork in the Road” Offer: An Analysis of HHS and FDA Staffing Cuts
HHS fired thousands of staffers this week, acting on its plan to dismiss 10,000 people, on top of around 10,000 people already leaving the agencies under the Trump administration’s Fork in the Road offer and early retirement.
At FDA, the entire team that handles communications for the agency lost their jobs, according to staffers who were among those fired. And more than 800 people were fired at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, according to an official who was laid off and fears retribution for sharing information.
Speaking of the staffing cuts, Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, who served as President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator, told NPR that it’s uncertain that these agencies will be able to continue tracking disease outbreaks, developing new treatments and other work critical for protecting Americans’ health.
“We don’t know what the implications of all of this will be. More people will get sick, more diseases will occur, and infrastructure will be less and less capable of responding to those threats.
All CDC sources spoke to NPR and agreed that the cuts to the Global Health Center and HIV branches would have catastrophic consequences.
The leadership in HHS and CDC said that the reduction-in-force is over. But for global health, we have been told that may not be the case,” a current CDC official told NPR.
The State Department was involved in carrying out the programs of the President’s flagship project to control HIV and was able to save 25 lives.
Two scientists who worked at Maternal and Child Health said CDC was “providing HIV treatment for over 300,000 children, and we provided treatment for over 380,000 HIV positive pregnant and breastfeeding women in 2024.”
The Global Health Center has three divisions. Global immunization and global health protection were unaffected, both of which are responsible for disease management and gathering information from their network of labs.
The Director of the center was transferred to the Indian Health Service as part of the restructuring.
That’s one of the ways that global health will be affected by the 25% reduction in staff and 35% reduction in contracts for the agency — ordered on April 1 by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of an effort to “reduce bureaucratic sprawl.”
“I think one of the challenges that we’re really confronting is that these sweeping and unprecedented actions that are being taken by the current administration are coming at a time when many other governments are also cutting their foreign aid budgets for many different reasons.”
The U.S. has played a major role in global health and helped save millions of lives around the world with its support for global immunization efforts and HIV/AIDs treatments, says Janeen Madan Keller, the deputy director of the global health policy program at the Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
“HIV knows no boundaries. If we see a resurgence of HIV globally. There’s going to be long term consequences everywhere for what we know about HIV, resistance to drugs, and transmission rates. It’s just going to be detrimental. It’s going to harm economies around the world,” the epidemiologist said.
The elimination of this program could have a serious impact on the lives of Americans according to a epidemiologist who was not affected by the cuts.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will have to reduce spending on contracts by at least a third, Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at the Public Citizen, said. This comes after President Donald Trump ordered a 25% reduction in staff and 35% reduction in contracts for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).