Federal health agencies, including CDC, NIH and FDA, take stock of layoffs: gunshots

The letters of termination landed in the mailboxes of hundreds of hundreds of centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health this weekend, while the Trump administration has advanced layoffs announced verbally on Friday.

It is according to more than half a dozen current staff who asked for anonymity because they are not allowed to speak publicly and feared the repercussions.

The number of employees who lost their jobs in NIH and CDC was lower than initially planned. At CDC, the current staff say that he was not told why and that you always fear that more cuts can arrive.

Among the staff who were taken in the first wave of layoffs: scientists trained in the doctorate responsible for helping local officials and the State to respond to epidemics; Employees who guarantee medical devices for patients with cancer and diabetes are safe; and a public health officer parked at an international airport that strengthens regulations to prevent rabies animals and other infectious diseases from entering the United States

In total, around 750 employees of the CDC received letters of dismissal during the weekend, according to current CDC staff who were on appeal with the agency leadership and another who examined an internal memo.

On Friday, CDC management told staff that 10% of the agency workforce – around 1,300 employees – would be informed that they would lose their jobs.

“I will work tomorrow and I do not know who is employed,” said one of the staff of the CDC, who had not yet received an official notification on exactly which employees of their division had lost their jobs.

At the National Institutes of Health, between 1,000 and 1,200 employees received its notification on Saturday evening that they were cut, two staff members who know the situation at the NPR situation. It is a few hundred less than expected.

Officials were able to save jobs because some positions have been deemed essential, such as people who work at the NIH clinical center, said a person.

The FDA cuts have struck people who are doing research and approvals on the agency’s medical devices, according to the FDA licensed employees who were afraid of the consequences of expressing it.

Staff members working on drug approvals have been temporarily spared, a current FDA employee at NPR told NPR.

HHS, CDC, FDA and NIH did not respond to the request for NPR comments.

“ Performance ” cited as a cause of cuts

NPR examined the termination letters sent to the CDC, NIH and FDA staff.

All used a similar language and cited inadequate performances as a reason for their dismissal – but the employees with which NPR spoke had recordings of stellar work.

“Unfortunately, the agency notes that you are not suitable for continuous employment because your capacities, knowledge and skills do not correspond to the current needs of the agency, and your performance has not been sufficient to justify a Additional employment to the agency “, the letters from the office of the office of the secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, States.

The letters fix a date of termination from March 14, 2025.

In the three agencies, most of the people who lost their jobs were staff in their periods of probation – a prolonged trial from one to two years for new employees or those who have moved to new positions within the Agency – which have fewer workers’ protections.

Dr. Steve Monroe, a former senior CDC manager, described the decision as “extremely myopic” because she swept away people “, that they fulfill an important role in the organization or in the way they play”.

Some employees have been left in terms of and confused about their employment status and what to expect in the coming days.

For example, some who had been explicitly said that they would not yet have to receive a letter, including scholarship holders in the large -scale epidemic intelligence service, a leading training program for what Call “detectives of diseases”, the staff who are sent to respond to epidemics.

A CDC’s current staff member said that he would like to know that the cohort had been spared the last minute, but they were not necessarily “optimistic”, given mass layoffs during the weekend.

What positions were lost

The job cuts have made certain essential functions of federal health agencies.

NPR has heard several FDA staff members, who have spoke anonymously because they fear of remuneration for speaking, who worked on criticisms for devices that make things like detect cancer And help people with diabetes. They say they have kept devices that do not work or are dangerous out of the market and that fearing that the reduction in their ranks can be dangerous for consumers.

In NIH, the offices involved in the examination and administration of subsidies to researchers outside the agency, as in universities and medical centers, were hardly affected, according to a member of the staff of the situation. The NIH spends most of the annual budget of $ 48 billion from the agency on this type of “extramural” research to find new remedies against cancer, heart disease and other diseases.

“Our nation cannot afford to widen our research and public health assets,” said Mary Woolley, president and chief executive officer! America, a defense group for defenders. “Patients are waiting; lives are at stake.”

At the CDC, scholarship holders who respond to epidemics of diseases of at least two famous CDC training programs have been cut. Twenty scholarship holders at the Laboratory Leadership Service received dismissal letters on Saturday. They “help develop the tests of new and emerging diseases”, explains a scholarship holder. Those of the program have a doctorate and are often co-deplamed with scholarship holders in the epidemic intelligence service for responses to the epidemic.

Each cohort of laboratory scholarships had received a letter and a performance review a few weeks ago, attesting to the high quality of his work, the scholarship holder said: “We included this letter in the response email for Show a good position and more than adequate performance.

Monroe, the former CDC official, worries that these cuts could “hinder” the ability of the nation to respond to epidemics. “Losing them today means that there is less capacity to help states tomorrow if there is a need for an investigation into the epidemic,” he said.

In the longer term, cuts can lead to fewer people trained or choose to work in public health. “In a year, there will not be people who have a year and a half of experience because we have unleashed them,” he said.

The ranks of the Public Health Associate Program were also decimated by layoffs. The integrated scholarship, recent collegial and control graduates in the health and premises health services and serves as a way for public health careers, explains current CDC personnel familiar with the program.

A CDC employee who has been accused of having prevented the introduction of zoonotic diseases (those who jump from animals to humans), had assumed that they would be immune to layoffs because their work involved national security and the border control. They had recently received a CDC excellence award.

It is not clear either how the layoffs will save money to the government, explains Patti Zettle, professor of law at Ohio State University who was a deputy lawyer of HHS, covering the FDA, until in January.

For example, FDA use fees, paid by drug and devices manufacturers, started in the 1990s to accelerate things such as drug and devices approvals. In exchange for costs, the agency undertakes to hire more staff and more quickly examine requests for new products.

“When we think of all layoffs across HHS, none of them will save money to long-term taxpayers,” she said. “It is particularly clear that the dismissal of FDA staff who are funded by user fees will not allow taxpayers to earn money. Taxpayers do not pay these employees.”

In response to a request for comments on the cuts when the word was released on Friday: Andrew Nixon, communications director at HHS, wrote in an email at NPR: “HHS follows administration and will take action for Support the president’s wider efforts to restructure and rationalize the federal government.

Do you have any information you want to share on current changes through the federal government? Contact these authors via encrypted communications: Will Stoned @ wstonereports.95, Pien Huang @ Pienhuang.88 and Rob Stein @ RoStein.22.

Rob Stein and Sydney Lupkin contributed to this report.