The Department of Health and Human Services plans to slash 10,000 employees in a major restructuring of the whole department, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday.
When combined with other efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency to downsize, the workforce will be reduced from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
Kennedy said the restructuring involves eliminating “an entire alphabet soup of departments” while streamlining others.
Major changes include combining many offices into more centralized ones, HHS announced. HHS plans to create the Administration for a Healthy America, which will combine the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) will be subsumed into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HHS’s many divisions will be consolidated and administrative functions across these divisions like human resources and IT will be centralized. Twenty-eight divisions will be consolidated to 15.
Ten regional offices will be consolidated to five. At the FDA, one of the least trusted agencies within HHS, 3,500 full-time employees will be cut in operations and administration.
HHS said the move will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers or inspectors. NIH will combine administrative employees across its 27 institutes and centers — leading to approximately 1,200 positions being cut.
CDC will reduce its workforce by 2,400 employees, which will be offset by approximately 1,000 employees from ASPR moving into CDC.
The division of labor between the many offices under HHS stoked confusion and inefficiencies during COVID-19 pandemic.
HHS grew considerably during the pandemic. The Food and Drug Administration grew by 13%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grew by 26% and the National Institutes of Health grew by 34% under Biden, according to trade publication Government Executive.
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