HHS ordered to cut 35% of spending on contracts: On top of layoffs, HHS should not reorganize the public health system
The cuts to spending on contracts applies across all divisions of HHS – which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other agencies.
Cleaning services, computer support and specialized equipment for medical research are some of the things that can be spent on contracts. The contracts often cover functions that are specialized or not large enough to require full-time staff.
Steinbrook said in an e-mail that these spending cuts will weaken public health in this country. He called the cuts “arbitrary and senseless.”
The reorganization of the agency and the mass layoffs of HHS staff may cause problems rather than accomplish anything constructive, due to the rushed cuts.
“This is at best getting water from a stone,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, via e-mail. “They seem to be on a quest to totally destroy the infrastructure of the nation’s public health system. It’s amazing that they are looking to cut the parts of our health system that give the best value for prevention and wellness.”
The CDC and the Indian Health Service were neither affected by the layoffs nor the Fork in the Road offer: Sources of critical information on the cuts
There were thousands of HHS staffers fired this week after the agency decided to dismiss 10,000 people and another 10,000 people were already leaving agencies under the Fork in the Road offer.
CDC employees say amid the chaos of the layoffs, colleagues were trying to figure which divisions or branches still remained at the CDC, sharing lists on white boards and online. Managers were not told anything in advance.
Speaking of the staffing cuts, Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, who served as President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator, told NPR that it’s uncertain that these agencies will be able to continue tracking disease outbreaks, developing new treatments and other work critical for protecting Americans’ health.
We do not know what will happen with this. I am worried that we are going to see more people getting sick, more disease outbreaks and infrastructure that is less and less capable of responding to those threats.
All CDC sources that talked to NPR agreed that the cuts to the Global Health Center and its HIV branches would have a “catastrophic” effect.
“My colleagues at the branch and I have really dedicated our careers to ensuring that mothers and babies receive the HIV services they need, and we serve as advocates for children to get the services they need so that they can be healthy and stay alive,” the scientist said. “I personally am just worried that no one will be advocating for these populations that are often overlooked anymore, and that that puts them more at risk for dying.”
The State Department is one of several federal teams that were very important in carrying-out the programs of the Bush administration’s use of thePEPFAR initiative to control HIV.
The CDC provided treatment for more than 350,000 children who had HIV and more than 300,000 HIV positive pregnant and breastfeeding women in ten years, according to two scientists working at Maternal and Child Health.
The Global Health Center is divided into three divisions. Global immunization and global health protection, which supports vaccine distributions for diseases, and collects information and draws on their network of labs, were undamaged.
As part of the restructuring, the director of the center Kayla Laserson was one of several CDC directors transferred to the Indian Health Service, leaving the Global Health Center in the hands of deputies.
Neither HHS nor CDC released further information on the cuts, but six current CDC/Global Health Center employees gave details to NPR. They asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
Many other governments are cutting their foreign aid budgets at a time when the current administration is taking sweeping and unprecedented actions.
In regards to global health, the United States has played a major role, and helped save millions of lives with its support for global immunization efforts and HIV/AIDs treatments.
“HIV knows no borders and that’s right.” If we see a resurgence of HIV globally. This will have long term consequences, with what we know about the different types of HIV, resistance to drugs, and transmission rates. It’s just going to be detrimental. The epidemiologist said it was going to hurt economies around the world.
One epidemiologist who wasn’t affected by the cuts said that even though this was a global health program, it could have a negative impact on Americans.