CNN
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Some employees at US health agencies have started receiving notice that their jobs are being cut.
“This [reduction in force] action does not reflect directly on your service, performance or conduct,” according to one email to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff member that was obtained by CNN. The email, sent by Thomas J. Nagy Jr., deputy assistant secretary for human resources at HHS, said the person would be placed on administrative leave and would no longer have access to building as of Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear how many employees had received notice Tuesday morning. CNN has reached out the HHS for comment.
At CDC, cuts were happening in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the Office of Smoking and Health, Violence Prevention division and HIV offices.
At the US Food and Drug Administration, staffers in the Office of New Drugs and Office of Policy & International Engagement were receiving notice.
The Center for Mental Health Services at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was also seeing cuts.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was among those cut, according to a source familiar with the changes inside the National Institutes of Health.
A senior official at CDC said “What is really galling and hard is that supervisors and leaders aren’t being told anything, they just have to wait and see which of their staff get notices.”
“It’s a bloodbath,” one FDA employee said.
The US Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that its reduction in force, or RIF, would cut 10,000 full-time employees in addition to 10,000 employees who’ve left voluntarily, shrinking the workforce from about 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000. About 5,200 probationary workers who have been in their positions less than a year or two were also terminated last month. Most are on temporary administrative leave as their fate winds its way through federal courts.
HHS said last week cuts would include:
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3,500 full-time employees at the US Food and Drug Administration, not affecting drug, medical device or food reviewers or inspectors
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2,400 employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health due to centralizing procurement, human resources and communications
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300 employees at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the cuts as part of a sweeping reorganization that would move or cut several parts of the federal health workforce, including the creation of a new Administration for a Healthy America, which it said would combine the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
CNN’s Ross Levitt contributed to this report.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
