WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥 As they readied to leave work Monday, some workers at the Food and Drug Administration were told to pack their laptops and prepare for the possibility that they wouldn鈥檛 be back, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.
Nervous employees 鈥 roughly 82,000 across the nation's public health agencies 鈥 waited to see whether pink slips would arrive in their inboxes. The mass dismissals have been expected since announced last week that will result in 20,000 fewer jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services. About 10,000 will be eliminated through layoffs.
The email sent to some at the FDA said staffers should check their email for a possible notice that their jobs would be eliminated, which would also halt their access to government buildings. An FDA employee shared the email with AP on condition of anonymity, because they weren鈥檛 authorized to disclose internal agency matters.
Kennedy has criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient 鈥渟prawling bureaucracy鈥 and said the department鈥檚 $1.7 trillion yearly budget 鈥渉as failed to improve the health of Americans.鈥 He plans to streamline operations and fold entire agencies 鈥 such as the 鈥 into a new Administration for a Healthy America.
Anand Parekh, who worked worked at the department during the Bush and Obama administrations and is now the chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, wonders what kind of analysis Kennedy has done to arrive at job cuts. He questioned how closely Kennedy could examine each of the agencies after spending just over a month as health secretary.
鈥淥ne would hope that as they made these cuts, they really did a deep dive,鈥 Parekh said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not quite clear from a transparency perspective how they got from where they were to here.鈥
On Friday, dozens of federal health employees working to stop infectious diseases from spreading were told they'd be put on leave.
Several current and former federal officials told the AP that the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy was hollowed out that night. Some employees posted on LinkedIn about the office emptying. And an HIV and public health expert who works directly with the office was emailed a notice saying that all staff had been asked to leave. The expert spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity over fears of losing future work on the issue.
Several of the office鈥檚 advisory committees 鈥 including the 春色直播 Vaccine Advisory Committee and others that advise on HIV/AIDs response 鈥 have had their meetings canceled.
鈥淚t puts a number of important efforts to improve the health of Americans at risk,鈥 said Dr. Robert H. Hopkins Jr., the former chair of the 春色直播 Vaccine Advisory Committee, an advisory committee of the office.
An HHS official said the office is not being closed but that the department is seeking to consolidate the work and reduce redundancies.
Also, as of Monday, a website for the Office of Minority Health was disabled, with an error message saying the page 鈥渄oes not exist.鈥
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts have begun at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds.
Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated because of lost funding, 鈥渟ome of them overnight, some of them are already gone,鈥 said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the 春色直播 Association of County and City Health Officials.
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Associated Press writer Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed reporting.
