Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a significant cut Thursday to the size of his agency in restructuring efforts he said are aimed at making America healthy again.
The planned changes include axing 10,000 full-time employees across departments in charge of responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, and providing insurance for the poorest Americans, among others.
The reduction is in addition to the roughly 10,000 employees who opted to quit the department through voluntary resignation offers since President Donald Trump took office. This brings down the total number of full-time employees from 82,000 to 62,000.
HHS is also apparently poised to slash even more of its workforce past the thousands mentioned in the Thursday announcement.
“The restructuring will address this and serve multiple goals without impacting critical services. First, it will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year through a reduction in workforce of about 10,000 full-time employees who are part of this most recent transformation,” the department said in a press release. “When combined with HHS’ other efforts, including early retirement and Fork in the Road, the restructuring results in a total downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.”
The department will be shedding about a quarter of its workforce in total and losing half of its 10 regional offices. According to the release, essential health services won’t be affected.
Although health agencies within HHS, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration, are typically independent from the White House and the health secretary, things might be different under Kennedy.
Trump’s health secretary is establishing a new subdivision called the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) as part of the new reorganization that will merge offices in HHS that tackle addiction, toxic substances, and occupational safety, among others. The newly created central office will focus on chronic disease prevention programs and health resources for low-income Americans.
“We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in a statement. “This Department will do more—a lot more—at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
In a video posted to X on Thursday morning, said the new AHA will “eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions by merging them.”
Through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration’s layoff plans for the 10,000 federal workers break down into 3,500 from the FDA, 2,400 from the CDC, 1,200 from the NIH, and 300 from CMS, despite ongoing lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reported.
