HHS Ordered to Cut 35% of Spending on Contracts: “I’m All You, but I Can’t Get Water from a Stone”

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.

Spending on contracts can include mundane things like cleaning services or computer support, or specialized equipment for medical research such as freezer storage for bio-specimens or work with outside laboratories for tests, said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen. Functions that are not large enough to require a full-time staff are often covered in the contracts.

Steinbrook said that these spending cuts will make public health in this country worse. He characterized the cuts as “arbitrary and stupid”.

Last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that the layoffs were intended to reduce “bureaucratic sprawl.” We are realigning the organization with its core mission and new priorities to reverse the chronic disease epidemic.

“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 trying to destroy 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.”

Source: On top of layoffs, HHS ordered to cut 35% of spending on contracts

The Effects of Staff Cuts on the Global Health Center under the Trump-President’s Fork in the Road Expenditure

HHS fired thousands of staffers this week, acting on its plan to dismiss 10,000 people, on top of around 10,000 people already leaving the agencies under the Trump administration’s Fork in the Road offer and early retirement.

The 300 employees at the Division of Environmental health Science and Practice were terminated because they supported local public health efforts around the nation, like food safety inspections or lead poisoning in water systems.

A professor in the Brown University School of Public Health who served as the president’s COVID-19 response co-ordinate told NPR that it’s not certain if the agencies will be able to keep doing their work because of the staffing cuts.

“We don’t know what the implications of all of this will be. I am worried that as people get sick, more outbreak of disease, and infrastructure becomes less able to respond to those threats, we will have a harder time dealing with those threats.

All CDC sources that spoke to NPR agreed with one individual in saying that the cuts to the Global Health Center would have catastrophic consequences.

A CDC scientist complained about the government’s messages, saying “HIV treatment for pregnant women and children was identified as critical and life-saving by the State Department earlier this year.” It seems like this is an indication of the lack of coordination in the government, where the State Department is saying our work is critical yet we’re cut by HHS.

The State Department credits them with saving 25 as a result of the programs ofPEPFAR, which was started by the President George W. Bush in 2003 and was hailed as a government initiative to control HIV.

As of April 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shut down its Maternal and Child Health Branch, which works with other countries to ensure that mothers and children at risk of or infected by HIV receive treatment. All 22 staff were terminated.

There are three divisions at the Global Health Center. Two of the divisions were unscathed: global immunization, which supports vaccine distributions for polio and other diseases, and global health protection, which is responsible for disease surveillance, gathering information and drawing on their network of labs.

The director of the center was transferred to the Indian Health Service, leaving the Global Health Center to be taken care of by deputy directors.

That’s one of the ways that global health will be affected by the 25% reduction in staff and 35% reduction in contracts for the agency — ordered on April 1 by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of an effort to “reduce bureaucratic sprawl.”

The current administration’s actions, which are sweeping and unprecedented, are coming at a time when other governments are cutting their foreign aid budgets for many different reasons.

The U.S. has played a major role in global health and helped save millions of lives around the world with its support for global immunization efforts and HIV/AIDs treatments, says Janeen Madan Keller, the deputy director of the global health policy program at the Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

“HIV knows no boundaries. We should see a resurgence of HIV. There are long term consequences of it with what we know aboutHIV and its resistance to drugs. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to harm economies around the world,” the epidemiologist said.

Even though it was a global health program, the elimination could have a huge impact on the lives of Americans, says an epidemiologist who was not affected.