Roughly 10,000 employees across the Department of Health and Human Services are bracing for layoffs as part of a sweeping reorganization announced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is seeking to eliminate a total of 20,000 positions through restructuring and attrition. The shake-up has triggered widespread anxiety across federal health agencies, with many staffers warned to expect termination notices via email.
On Monday, some Food and Drug Administration workers were instructed to pack their laptops and await further communication, according to an internal email reviewed by the Associated Press. "As of today, March 31, 2025, (Doe) has not filed a complaint in her own name, nor has she sought an extension of time to do so," U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman wrote in a separate legal matter, illustrating the abrupt timelines currently applied across various sectors of the federal health bureaucracy.
Kennedy has described the department as a "sprawling bureaucracy" with a $1.7 trillion annual budget that he argues "has failed to improve the health of Americans." Under his plan, multiple agencies will be folded into a new "Administration for a Healthy America," including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
NIOSH, which studies workplace safety and health, is expected to lose at least two-thirds of its workforce-around 873 positions-according to multiple federal officials. The "probable effective date" for these cuts is June 30, according to a letter sent to the union representing affected employees.
The agency's Pittsburgh and Spokane offices, which house about 200 employees combined, will be heavily impacted. Entire teams, including the office of the NIOSH director and the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory-which evaluates N95 respirators and other PPE-are expected to be cut.
Lilas Soukup, president of AFGE 1916, confirmed receiving the notice but added, they received little guidance from HHS on the details of the cuts. Official reduction-in-force notifications had not yet been issued as of Monday evening.
Dr. Robert H. Hopkins Jr., former chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, warned that the dismantling of key offices, such as the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, poses a public health risk. "It puts a number of important efforts to improve the health of Americans at risk," he said.
A source familiar with the internal changes said that the Office of Minority Health website was disabled Monday, returning an error message that the page "does not exist." Several advisory committees, including those that guide vaccine policy and HIV response, have had upcoming meetings canceled without explanation.
Anand Parekh, former HHS deputy assistant secretary under Presidents Bush and Obama, expressed concern about the speed and opacity of the decision-making. "One would hope that as they made these cuts, they really did a deep dive," he said. "It's not quite clear from a transparency perspective how they got from where they were to here."
Outside Washington, ripple effects are already being felt. Local and state health departments are facing their own rounds of layoffs after HHS retracted more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related funds. "Some of them overnight, some of them are already gone," said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a key agency responsible for pandemic preparedness and vaccine development, is also being fragmented. Internal plans reviewed by CBS News show BARDA will likely be merged into the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), raising concerns about continuity in critical infectious disease research.
Among the paused BARDA-funded programs is a Vaxart project developing an oral COVID-19 vaccine. Other high-profile initiatives-such as the 9/11 health registry and firefighter cancer studies-are in jeopardy due to staff cuts and program relocations.
