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Hundreds of federal health workers, including doctors in senior leadership positions, began hearing early Tuesday morning that they are losing their jobs, part of a vast restructuring that will winnow down the agencies charged with regulating food and drugs, protecting Americans from disease and researching new treatments and cures.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that he is shrinking his department by 10,000 employees. Some senior leaders based in the Washington, D.C., area received notices that they were being reassigned to Indian Health Service territories, a tactic to force people out, employees said, because it would entail moving to other parts of the country.
Notices began arriving at 5 a.m., workers said, affecting offices responsible for everything from global health to medical devices to communications. Some knew the layoffs were coming; at the department headquarters in Washington, officials responsible for minority health and infectious disease prevention were told Friday that their offices were being eliminated, according to employees.
Others were caught off guard. At the Food and Drug Administration, senior leaders were pushed out and offices focused on food, drug and medical device policy were hit with deep staff reductions amounting to about 3,500 agency staff members. Some workers said that they discovered they were fired when they attempted to scan their badge to get into the building early Tuesday.
Employees laid off at the agency included those studying injuries, asthma, lead poisoning, smoking and radiation damage, as well as those that assess the health effects of extreme heat and wildfires. But some infectious disease teams were also laid off. A group focused on improving access to vaccines among underserved communities was cut, as was a group of global health researchers who were working on preventing mother to child transmission of H.I.V.
H.I.V. prevention was a big target overall. Jonathan Mermin, director of the center for H.I.V. and sexually transmitted diseases, was placed on administrative leave. The Trump administration had been weighing moving the C.D.C.’s division of H.I.V. prevention to a different agency within the health department. But on Tuesday, teams leading H.I.V. surveillance and research within that division were laid off. It was unclear whether some of those functions would be recreated elsewhere.
At the National Institutes of Health, several directors of institutes were given notices of reassignment to Indian Health Service territories, and were told that they would need to report back on Wednesday on whether they would accept the move. Among them were Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Shannon Zenk, who leads the National Institute of Nursing Research.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved. Powered by Vanilla
Comments
I'm not a health care expert but it seems like these actions may have the opposite effect.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so skeptical and just put my trust in Health Secretary Kennedy?
Will President Trump's diet which frequently includes McDonald's, KFC, and Diet Coke be impacted?
It would be tragic if POTUS had to curtail his consumption of Big Macs, Diet Cokes, and Lay's potato chips!
There are so many unanswered questions here...
Yes, that's a good idea. By the way, you would seem to be a good candidate to trust me to handle all of your financial affairs. Let me know if you're interested!
I'll send you a PM!
https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Schrute_Farms