RFK Jr. makes sweeping cuts in federal health programs, including CDC, FDA

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans Thursday to slash the Department of Health and Human Services, cutting astir a 4th of its workforce successful a large restructuring that volition consolidate respective departments.

According to the Department of Health, the cuts volition prevention $1.8 cardinal annually and trim the worker headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. Combined with erstwhile layoffs, the bureau said, the layoffs volition bring the section down to astir 62,000 workers.

Under a restructuring plan, the fig of wellness section divisions volition driblet from 28 divisions to 15 — including a caller Administration for a Healthy America, oregon AHA. The fig of determination offices volition driblet from 10 to five.

“We aren’t conscionable reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” Kennedy said successful a statement. “We are realigning the enactment with its halfway ngo and our caller priorities successful reversing the chronic illness epidemic. This Department volition bash much — a batch much — astatine a little outgo to the taxpayer.”

The nationalist and planetary wellness assemblage has been bracing for melodramatic alteration since Kennedy, an hostile of immoderate vaccines and an advocator of stronger nutrient safety, took bureau vowing extremist reform.

The superior people of Kennedy’s cuts is the Food and Drug Administration, which volition chopped its workforce by 3,500 full-time employees, according to a wellness section information sheet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention volition besides chopped 2,400 employees portion the National Institutes of Health cuts 1,200 employees.

In an code posted to the societal media level X, Kennedy called his section a “sprawling bureaucracy” that had seen rates of crab and chronic illness summation arsenic its fund had increased. His overhaul of the department, helium admitted would beryllium a “painful period” for the agency.