Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans Thursday to slash the Department of Health and Human Services, cutting nearly a quarter of its workforce in a major restructuring that will consolidate several departments.
According to the Department of Health, the cuts will save $1.8 billion annually and reduce the employee headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. Combined with previous layoffs, the agency said, the layoffs will bring the department down to about 62,000 workers.
Under a restructuring plan, the number of health department divisions will drop from 28 divisions to 15 — including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA. The number of regional offices will drop from 10 to five.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” the Health secretary said in a statement. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic. This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
Many in the national and global health community have been steeling themselves for dramatic change since Kennedy, an opponent of some vaccines and an advocate of stronger food safety, took office vowing radical reform.
The primary target of Kennedy’s cuts is the Food and Drug Administration, which works to ensure the safety and efficacy of foods, drugs, medical devices, tobacco and other regulated products. It will cut its workforce by 3,500 full-time employees, according to a health department fact sheet.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a vast $9-billion agency that works to prevent chronic diseases, fight infectious disease outbreaks and make vaccine recommendations, will also cut 2,400 employees. The National Institutes of Health, the primary federal government agency for conducting and supporting medical research, cuts 1,200 employees.
In an address posted to the social media platform X, Kennedy painted a dark, apocalyptic picture of the U.S health department, noting that as its budget and staff increased, all that money has failed to improve the health of Americans.
“In fact, the rate of chronic disease and cancer increased dramatically as our department has grown,” he said. “Our lifespan has dropped. So Americans now live six years shorter than Europeans. We have the sickest nation in the world, and we have the highest rate of chronic disease. The US ranks last among 40 developed nations in terms of health, but we spend two to three times more per capita than those nations.”
Kennedy called his department an “inefficient” and “sprawling bureaucracy” that had seen rates of cancer and chronic disease increase as its budget had increased.
“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” Kennedy said. “HHS has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine HR departments. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. They’re mainly operating in their silos.”
During the Biden administration, Kennedy said the health department budget had increased by 38% as staffing increased by 17%.
“But all that money has failed to improve the health of Americans,” he said.
Kennedy admitted that his overhaul of the department would be a “painful period” for the agency. But he said he wanted all employees to rally together “behind a simple, bold mission.”
“I want every HHS employee to wake up every morning asking themselves, ‘What can I do to restore American health today?’ I want to empower everyone in the HHS family to have a sense of purpose and pride and a sense of personal agency and responsibility to this larger goal. We’re going to save taxpayers nearly $2 billion a year, and we’re going to return HHS to its original commitment to public health.”