Kennedy to slash 10,000 jobs in major overhaul of US health agencies

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Sriparna Roy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans to reshape federal public health agencies on Thursday, including cutting 10,000 employees and centralizing some functions of the FDA, CDC and others under his purview.

The job cuts include 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health.

The latest job cuts, and about 10,000 recent voluntary departures, will reduce the number of full-time HHS employees to 62,000 from 82,000, the department said. 

"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.

"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," he added.

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.

Trump ordered all federal agencies earlier this month to draw up plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and the White House began reviewing the plans last week alongside Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

Large government agencies like HHS sprawl over time and there is merit in reorganizing them, which has happened under both Democratic and Republican administrations, but this plan goes beyond that, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at non-profit KFF.

"This is not just a reorganization of HHS. It is also a slashing of the federal workforce, which will ultimately affect government services," said Levitt, a former senior adviser to the White House and HHS under President Bill Clinton.

'DRASTICALLY SCALE BACK'

The planned FDA job cuts would not affect inspectors or reviewers of drugs, medical devices, or food, HHS said.

The terminations are likely to delay drug and medical device application reviews or cause missed deadlines, said Eva Temkin, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter who advises clients on drug and medical device applications. "There's a real risk that this results in delayed patient access to treatments," she said.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, currently an independent HHS agency with 1,000 employees, will be folded into the CDC.

The NIH will see staff reductions across its 27 institutes and centers.

"The only way to cut that high of a percentage of our staff, along with the 35% contracting cuts that are being directed, is to drastically scale back what NIH does across the board," said Nate Brought, the recently departed director of NIH's Executive Secretariat.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was comparatively spared with a reduction of about 300 employees. It was not immediately clear from which HHS divisions or offices the remaining 2,600 cuts would come.

As part of the restructuring, the department's 10 regional offices will be cut to five and its 28 divisions consolidated into 15, including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, which will combine offices that address addiction, toxic substances and occupational safety into one central office.

AHA will include the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

It will be divided into divisions of Primary Care, Maternal and Child Health, Mental Health, Environmental Health, HIV/AIDS, and Workforce, the department said.

The changes centralize functions such as communications, human resources, IT, and policy planning that currently spread out across several health agencies, including the FDA, CDC, and NIH. Agencies report to the health secretary but have traditionally operated somewhat independently of HHS and the White House.

HHS said it would also combine the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality into a new Office of Strategy that will conduct research that informs Kennedy's policies.

There are no additional cuts currently planned, the department said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New York; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Franklin Paul and Bill Berkrot)