Latest news with #ViralHepatitis
Politico
03-04-2025
- Health
- Politico
Which jobs were cut at CDC? Here's a list.
The layoffs at CDC this week hit global and environmental health as well as HIV prevention programs especially hard, according to an overview document obtained by POLITICO. The document, shared during an agency meeting Tuesday, paints a picture of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that will be more narrowly focused on infectious disease, with a significantly less holistic view of public health. The job cuts include the elimination of about a fourth of the staff at the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention and about a third of the workers at the CDC's Injury Center. 'When you see the elimination of the Office of Smoking and Health, when smoking is the leading preventable cause of chronic disease, you have to ask the question, 'What are they thinking?' asked Dr. Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the agency. The cuts are part of a large-scale restructuring at the Department of Health and Human Services — with the goal of eliminating 10,000 employees, 2,400 from CDC. A spokesperson for HHS did not respond to a request asking whether changes to the staff reductions had been made since they were shared with staff Tuesday. ABC News reported that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to reinstate some workers who were mistakenly fired. Here are the cuts: — National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion was reduced by about a third, losing the Office on Smoking and Health, Oral Health, Population Health, and some of the Reproductive Health divisions. — The Office of Health Equity was eliminated. The parts of its work that are written into law will go to the Office of Minority Health and the Office of Women's Health. — Discretionary programs were cut from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, leaving behind only the mandatory World Trade Center health program and the Radiation Dose Reconstruction Program. The Trump administration plans to fold NIOSH into a new HHS agency called the Administration for a Healthy America. — The cuts dissolve the Birth Defects Center, but retain some of its work, including the Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network. Some birth defects surveillance will continue, as well as autism surveillance. — The National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention lost about a fourth of its staff. The biggest cuts came from the Division of HIV Prevention. The Global Health Center Division of Global HIV & TB was also reduced by roughly a fourth. — CDC's Injury Center lost roughly a third of its staff. It will retain the Overdose Prevention Division and suicide prevention branch. Some surveillance activities will continue, like the National Violent Death Reporting System and 'adverse childhood experience' monitoring. — The National Center for Environmental Health lost its Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will be folded into the Administration for a Healthy America. — The National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases lost its partnership and health equity branch. — The media support, broadcast services, visual design, and content and engagement branches were cut from the Office of Communications. — The Office of Acquisition Services in the Office of Financial Resources and the Office of Human Resources saw big cuts, while the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity was eliminated. — The CDC's office tasked with responding to Freedom of Information Act requests was cut. The administration plans to create one FOIA office for all of HHS. — The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response lost 81 staff, according to an HHS official granted anonymity to discuss the cuts. Around a dozen of those let go were Strategic National Stockpile employees who worked in state, local, tribal and territorial programs, while others worked on grant management. Around 30 of the layoffs were from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the person said. The Trump administration has not publicly released a detailed overview of cuts at HHS, of which CDC is part, leading to confusion about the reorganization. 'The important next step for HHS is to answer questions from Congress, release a chart [of the cuts], share information with partners, and make sure that state and local health departments who carry this work out in communities across the country know who to call,' said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a forum of leaders from the nation's largest urban public health departments.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr.'s End Game
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is finally getting his wish of sucker punching the federal health agencies. This week, Kennedy began the process of firing some 10,000 employees working under the Health and Human Services umbrella. Even before he took office, Kennedy warned health officials that they should pack their bags, and on Tuesday, he defended the cuts: 'What we've been doing isn't working,' Kennedy posted on X. He is focused on 'realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.' But instead of improving how the federal health bureaucracy works, RFK Jr. is throwing his agencies into chaos. The Trump administration hasn't released details about which offices specifically were targeted, but the cuts seem to be so deep and indiscriminate that they are going to hamstring Kennedy's own stated priorities. Kennedy has made clear that he's singularly focused on reducing rates of chronic disease in America, but the health secretary has reportedly laid off officials in the CDC's office tasked with that same goal. While cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of chronic disease, the top FDA official in charge of regulating tobacco is now on administrative leave, and everyone working for the CDC office that monitors tobacco use has been fired, according to the former CDC director Tom Frieden. Despite Kennedy's promises to establish a culture of 'radical transparency' at the federal agencies, he also appears to have fired the employees whom journalists and the greater public rely on to provide essential updates about the government's actions. (In a statement, a spokesperson for HHS said that the personnel cuts were focused on 'redundant or unnecessary administrative positions.') Kennedy, an anti-vaccine advocate, seems to have targeted more than just the most pro-vaccine voices in the government. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he would 'empower the scientists' as health secretary, but here are just a few of the M.D. and Ph.D.s who were reportedly targeted yesterday: the head of the FDA's Office of New Drugs, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, the head of CDC's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the director of the NIH's Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, the director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. No plan—not his MAHA agenda, not efficiency, nothing—can realistically explain cuts like these. Instead, the mass firings don't seem to be a means to an end on the way to overhauling American health. They are an end in themselves. It'll take months, if not years, to fully appreciate the effect that the cuts will have on America's scientific enterprise. The decimation at the FDA is particularly galling. Several of the agency's top leaders charged with reviewing and approving innovative new treatments have been ushered to the exit. This is likely to lead to slower development of advancements in biomedical science; although the FDA doesn't fund biomedical research, its leaders play a crucial role in advising pharmaceutical companies on how to conduct research and ultimately get their breakthroughs approved. America was just beginning to reap the benefits of these efforts. There are now gene therapies that can treat genetic blindness. Young children who previously would have been condemned to certain death at the hands of a rare disease, such as severe spinal muscular atrophy, now have a chance at life. The government invested in mRNA technology for decades before it was leveraged to create vaccines that saved us from a once-in-century pandemic. One particularly dispiriting departure is that of Peter Marks, the longtime leader of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. I'd guess that, unlike me, you didn't spend the early pandemic binge-watching scientific meetings where vaccine policy was debated. Marks was impossible to miss—a bespectacled man speaking from a bunkerlike basement, a painting of a polar bear serving tea behind him. He gets a hefty portion of credit for Trump's Operation Warp Speed, the effort to turbocharge the development of COVID vaccines, and he came up with the moniker. His center also regulates gene therapies, stem cells, and the U.S. blood supply. Marks reportedly resigned under pressure from Kennedy on Friday, just before mass firings hit the FDA. The two men—one, America's top vaccine regulator and the other, its top vaccine-conspiracy theorist—have a long history. In 2021, when Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization formerly chaired by Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke authorization for COVID shots, Marks is the one who signed the letter denying the request. It's reasonable to assume that Kennedy and Marks were never going to see eye to eye on vaccines. But Marks publicly insisted that he wanted to stay in his role, and that he was willing to work with Kennedy. In a resignation letter, Marks wrote that Kennedy demanded nothing short of 'subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.' (Marks declined to comment for this story.) Of course, not all 10,000 people who were fired had this type of history with their new boss. But the cuts, in many ways, appear to be rooted in a similar antagonism. In his welcome address to HHS staff in February, Kennedy offered reassurance that he was not coming in with biases, and said that people should give him a chance. 'Let's start a relationship by letting go of any preconceptions that you may have about me, and let's start from square one,' Kennedy told the crowd. 'Let's establish a mutual intention to work toward what we all care about, the health of the American people.' In firing a huge swath of his staff, Kennedy has made clear what he believes: Anyone with an HHS badge is complicit in the current system, whether or not they have anything to do with the country's health problems. As Calley Means, a top adviser to Kennedy, said during a Politico health-care summit earlier today, the scientists who were laid off 'have overseen, just demonstrably, a record of utter failure.' Kennedy can argue all he wants that the focus of federal health agencies needs to shift more toward chronic disease. Means and other MAHA acolytes are right that, in some ways, America has gotten less healthy and federal bureaucrats haven't done enough to solve the problem. But decimating the entire health bureaucracy in this country is not proving his point. Kennedy doesn't look like he is setting the agencies on a productive new course. He looks like he's just out for revenge. Katherine J. Wu contributed reporting. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
02-04-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
RFK Jr.'s End Game
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is finally getting his wish of sucker punching the federal health agencies. This week, Kennedy began the process of firing some 10,000 employees working under the Health and Human Services umbrella. Even before he took office, Kennedy warned health officials that they should pack their bags, and on Tuesday, he defended the cuts: 'What we've been doing isn't working,' Kennedy posted on X. He is focused on 'realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.' But instead of improving how the federal health bureaucracy works, RFK Jr. is throwing his agencies into chaos. The Trump administration hasn't released details about which offices specifically were targeted, but the cuts seem to be so deep and indiscriminate that they are going to hamstring Kennedy's own stated priorities. Kennedy has made clear that he's singularly focused on reducing rates of chronic disease in America, but the health secretary has reportedly laid off officials in the CDC's office tasked with that same goal. While cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of chronic disease, the top FDA official in charge of regulating tobacco is now on administrative leave, and everyone working for the CDC office that monitors tobacco use has been fired, according to former CDC director Tom Frieden. Despite Kennedy's promises to establish a culture of 'radical transparency' at the federal agencies, he also appears to have fired the employees whom journalists and the greater public rely on to provide essential updates about the government's actions. (In a statement, a spokesperson for HHS said that the personnel cuts were focused on 'redundant or unnecessary administrative positions.') Kennedy, an anti-vaccine advocate, seems to have targeted more than just the most pro-vaccine voices in the government. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he would 'empower the scientists' as health secretary, but here are just a few of the M.D. and Ph.D.s who were reportedly targeted yesterday: The head of the FDA's O ffice of New Drugs, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, the head of CDC's Ce nter for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the director of the NIH's Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, the director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. No plan—not his MAHA agenda, not efficiency, nothing—can realistically explain cuts like these. Instead, the mass firings don't seem to be a means to an end on the way to overhauling American health. They are an end in themselves. It'll take months, if not years, to fully appreciate the effect that the cuts will have on America's scientific enterprise. The decimation at the FDA is particularly galling. Several of the agency's top leadership charged with reviewing and approving innovative new treatments have been ushered to the exit. This is likely to lead to slower development of advancements in biomedical science; while the FDA doesn't fund biomedical research, its leaders play a critical role in advising pharmaceutical companies on how to conduct research, and ultimately get their breakthroughs approved. America was just beginning to reap the benefits of these efforts. There are now gene therapies that can treat genetic blindness. Young children who previously would have been condemned to certain death at the hands of a rare disease, such as severe spinal muscular atrophy, now have a chance at life. The government invested in mRNA technology for decades before it was leveraged to create vaccines that saved us from a once-in-century pandemic. One particularly dispiriting departure is that of Peter Marks, the longtime leader of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. I'd guess that, unlike me, you didn't spend the early pandemic binge-watching scientific meetings where vaccine policy was debated. Marks was impossible to miss—a bespectacled man speaking from a bunkerlike basement, a painting of a polar bear serving tea behind him. He gets a hefty portion of credit for Trump's Operation Warp Speed, the effort to turbocharge the development of COVID vaccines, and he came up with the moniker. His center also regulates gene therapies, stem cells, and the U.S. blood supply. Marks reportedly resigned under pressure from Kennedy on Friday, just before mass firings hit the FDA. The two men—one, America's top vaccine regulator and the other, its top vaccine-conspiracy theorist—have a long history. In 2021, when Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization formerly chaired by Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke authorization for COVID shots, Marks is the one who signed the letter denying the request. It's reasonable to assume that Kennedy and Marks were never going to see eye to eye on vaccines. But Marks publicly insisted that he wanted to stay in his role, and that he was willing to work with Kennedy. In a resignation letter, Marks wrote that Kennedy demanded nothing short of 'subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.' (Marks declined to comment for this story.) Of course, not all 10,000 people who were fired had this type of history with their new boss. But the cuts, in many ways, appear to be rooted in a similar antagonism. In his welcome address to HHS staff in February, Kennedy offered reassurance that he was not coming in with biases, and said that people should give him a chance. 'Let's start a relationship by letting go of any preconceptions that you may have about me, and let's start from square one,' Kennedy told the crowd. 'Let's establish a mutual intention to work toward what we all care about, the health of the American people.' In firing a huge swath of his staff, Kennedy has made it clear what he believes: Anyone with an HHS badge is complicit in the current system, whether or not they have anything to do with the country's health problems. As Calley Means, a top advisor to Kennedy, said during a Politico health-care summit earlier today, the scientists who were laid off 'have overseen, just demonstrably, a record of utter failure.' Kennedy can argue all he wants that the focus of federal health agencies needs to shift more toward chronic disease. Means and other MAHA acolytes are right that, in some ways, America has gotten less healthy and federal bureaucrats haven't done enough to solve the problem. But decimating the entire health bureaucracy in this country is not proving his point. Kennedy doesn't look like he is setting the agencies on a productive new course. He looks like he's just out for revenge.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump Finally Takes Revenge on CDC With Total Bloodbath
In a stroke of revenge for Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thousands of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost their jobs Tuesday. The 'reduction in force' affected workers across many departments vital to U.S. public health, including the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the Division of Population Health, the Division of Reproductive Health, the Division of HIV Prevention, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, Wired reports. Even programs at the centers on Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion as well as HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention were affected. The HIV program reportedly lost at least half of its workforce. Employees across the agency received notices via email beginning 5 a.m. Tuesday, with some workers showing up to their offices to find their ID badges didn't work anymore. 'I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,' the email notice stated, according to Wired. 'This RIF does not reflect directly on your service, performance, or conduct. It is being taken solely for the reasons stated in the memorandum. After you receive this notice you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access beginning Tuesday, April 1, unless directed otherwise by your leadership.' One CDC employee told the magazine that '[t]here has been no effort in allowing staff to transfer projects, programs, or responsibilities.' Even the Freedom of Information Act office at the CDC, as well as the FDA's communications and web office, were cut. The move comes among massive layoffs from Kennedy across the entire Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday. Those firings include people at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Kennedy has long been an anti-vaccine activist, so the move is in line with his beliefs, especially since he has already revoked over $11 billion in Covid-19 aid funding from HHS. Trump has long held a grudge against the CDC and other public health agencies, blaming them for tanking his first term when it was really his own mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, he and Kennedy are dealing a crippling blow to public health in America.
WIRED
01-04-2025
- Health
- WIRED
The CDC Has Been Gutted
Leah Feiger Makena Kelly Kate Knibbs Apr 1, 2025 11:15 AM Thousands of CDC employees who worked on things like preventing HIV and lead poisoning have been told they were subject to a reduction in force. Experts say people will die. Thousands of federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified early Tuesday morning that they were subject to a reduction in force, or RIF, sources tell WIRED, shuttering programs that directly serve and inform the American public. The effect was felt across the CDC, as workers in the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP), the Division of Population Health, the Division of HIV Prevention, the Division of Reproductive Health, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and National Center for Injury Prevention and Control all received RIF notices today. Dozens of other programs throughout the CDC's national centers for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; Environmental Health; Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and the Global Health center were also impacted. Multiple sources in the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that houses the CDC, say that RIF notices began going out around 5:00 am ET on Tuesday. Employees across HHS offices arrived at buildings only to discover that their badges no longer worked, sources tell WIRED. 'I regret to inform you that you are being affected by a reduction in force (RIF) action,' reads the email to affected employees. 'This RIF does not reflect directly on your service, performance, or conduct. It is being taken solely for the reasons stated in the memorandum. After you receive this notice you will be placed on administrative leave and will no longer have building access beginning Tuesday, April 1, unless directed otherwise by your leadership.' The memorandum refers to the February 11 executive order from President Donald Trump titled 'Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Workforce Optimization Initiative.' 'The cuts today at CDC targeted programs that address all aspects of American lives,' a source at the CDC tells WIRED. 'This will lead to worse health outcomes, greater risks to the US public, and will contribute to the decline in US life expectancy … programs that were eliminated fund positions across the country, in red and blue districts.' 'There has been no effort in allowing staff to transfer projects, programs, or responsibilities,' says one CDC staffer. These cuts will have immediate impact, experts say. At the Division for HIV Prevention, where the stated mission is 'to promote health and quality of life by preventing HIV infection and reducing HIV-related illness and death in the United States,' at least half of the employees received RIF notices. 'We're going to have patients die,' says Jade Pagkas-Bather, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Chicago who also specializes in HIV prevention. 'Unnecessary, preventable death.' Joseph Cherabie, a physician and assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, says that these cuts will have devastating consequences for HIV patients around the country, especially in rural areas: 'It will be catastrophic.' Cherabie says that states relying heavily on federal funding for public health initiatives, like Missouri, where he works, will be hit especially hard. 'We're still seeing young people coming in with new HIV diagnoses, sometimes advanced HIV,' says Cherabie. Along with six other states, Missouri has been awarded CDC funding dedicated to lowering HIV infections, which helps pay for medicine like pre-exposure prophylactics (PrEP) for at-risk patients. Cherabie says patients outside of cities heavily rely on these kinds of CDC-funded HIV programs. 'Our efforts are largely dependent on these federal grants,' he says. 'We use them to make sure that we are able to distribute HIV testing equipment. We use them to make sure that we can get information and data on how much PrEP is being distributed, how many HIV diagnoses we have, how many HIV tests we're giving out. If we lose that, then we're moving around in the dark.' The CDC's DEHSP division includes the Asthma and Air Quality Branch, the Climate and Health Activity, the Emerging Environmental Hazards and Health Effects Branch, the Environmental Public Health Tracking Branch, the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, and the Water, Food, and Environmental Health Services Branch. All of these branches provide key services, and hundreds of employees received RIFs. Other divisions within DEHSP include, for example, the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program, which helps the cruise industry prevent public health issues, inspects cruises, and provides information on outbreaks. It's unclear if the program's work involving cruise inspections, or the lists of outbreaks on cruises, will continue. Similarly, the Lead Poisoning branch that works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning has also been gutted by RIFs. It's unclear how much of its work will be able to continue. The CDC cuts are part of the Trump administration's plans to remove more than 10,000 Health and Human Services employees. Those sweeping reductions were 'orchestrated' by Brad Smith, a member of Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, according to Politico. The agency-wide cuts were originally expected to fall on Friday. In a press release last Thursday, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that this restructuring, paired with early retirements and deferred resignations, would reduce the agency workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. 'Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,' Kennedy said in a statement announcing the restructuring last week. 'This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That's the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.' Anu Hazra, another infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago who also works as a physician at the nonprofit medical clinic Howard Brown Health, says that cuts to CDC funding will severely curb the type of HIV prevention and testing he does, and potentially outright eliminate some of the services offered. 'It's the only way that the work gets done,' he says; he does not believe that other institutions will be able to compensate for the loss of federal funding. 'The idea that you can just privatize public health, I don't think it's a realistic solution.' Hazra says that funding cuts will disproportionately impact people like his patients on the South Side of Chicago, who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged Black communities that 'either don't have access or have really reduced access' to medical services including HIV prevention and treatment. Several doctors WIRED spoke to were unnerved because President Donald Trump's first administration had championed federal HIV prevention funding initiatives, which aimed to essentially end new HIV infections in the US by 2030, so they did not anticipate this radical change. 'This work that we're doing was thanks to him,' Hazra says. 'This is not just something that impacts people in the ivory tower. This is not just something that impacts people who are physicians, or scientists, or academics,' says Pagkas-Bather. 'This is coming for you.' Additional reporting by Emily Mullin.
