US health department cutting 10,000 workers under Kennedy
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
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[WASHINGTON] The US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) will cut about 10,000 full-time jobs and close half of its regional offices, it said on Thursday (Mar 27), a major overhaul of the department under 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.
“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,” Kennedy said in a department statement.
President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who oversees the DOGE 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, 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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 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.
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The National Institutes for Health will see a reduction of 1,200 employees across its 27 institutes and centres, the breakdown showed. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was comparatively spared, with a reduction of about 300 people. As part of the restructuring, 28 units of the department will be consolidated into 15 new divisions, including a new ‘Administration for a Healthy America’, or AHA.
AHA will combine offices in HHS that address addiction, toxic substances and occupational safety, among others, into one central office, the agency said.
The new units will also centralise functions such as external affairs, human resources and IT. REUTERS
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