Thousands laid off at HHS

On Friday morning, senior HHS officials were informed that roughly 5,200 people on probationary employment across various health agencies would be fired that afternoon, according to sources who spoke to STAT. In that meeting, an NIH office director said that some probationary staff with specialized skills could be spared from the layoffs, according to audio shared with the Associated Press.

"Probationary employees" typically include recent hires or longer-serving employees who recently began new positions. The employees affected by the layoffs will be given a month's paid leave but lost access to work systems at the end of the day Friday, STAT reports.

The cuts also included 1,165 employees at NIH — , or around 6% of the roughly 20,000 people employed by the agency — , according to an internal NIH email seen by Reuters, as well as a number of employees at CMS.

Those laid off at CMS received termination letters that cited poor performance as the reason for termination. "Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the Agency's current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency," the emails read, according to Axios. Some terminated CMS employees who spoke to Axios said they have been locked out of their emails and work systems and have received no communication from CMS leadership..

Many FDA employees were also part of the cuts, according to three people who spoke to STAT. However, it wasn't immediately clear how many employees were affected or how many parts of FDA were involved.

In addition,  Renee Wegrzyn, head of ARPA-H and a Biden administration appointee, said on Friday that she was fired, a source told STAT. ARPA-H was established in 2022 by President Joe Biden to work with the private sector on breakthrough medical technology and employs fewer than 200 workers.

Reaction

The news of the layoffs filtered through HHS on Friday in a variety of meetings and phone calls, which created a sense of "confusion and uncertainty" among staff about who would be losing their jobs, according to a CDC staffer who spoke to NPR.

"This is absolutely tragic," said another CDC employee to NPR. "If we lose these people we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future."

Former NIH director Monica Bertagnolli called the situation at NIH "devastating."

"We're going to lose the next generation, that is the most difficult loss. This just … sends a chill," she said. "It's hard work, to get an education and be a scientist. Some of the fellows trained for so many years, and it's a mission that requires great, great dedication. We're very worried that our brilliant next generation isn't going to want to do that, if they're not very, very clearly supported."

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the cuts at CDC were "indiscriminate, poorly-thought out layoffs" that would be "very destructive to the core infrastructure of public health."

Joshua Barocas, an infectious disease expert at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said many of CDC's probationary employees have vital roles.

"It's essentially assuming that they are not in a job that is crucial for the success of keeping everyone safe — just because they've been there for less than a year or less than six months," Barocas said.

"That sort of slash-and-burn approach is what will cause continued disruptions in our understanding of diseases" and disease outbreaks, he added.

Experts also expressed concern over whether a shorter-staffed AI center at FDA would be able to adequately evaluate safety and efficacy, meet review deadlines, and proactively develop policies for a predictable and trustworthy review process.

"I fear if there's going to be even less rigor because we can't keep up with the bandwidth and we can't do important research, that burden is going to go to the hospitals," said one FDA employee who spoke to STAT. "It's going to go to the patients."

"What I find hard to reconcile is, on the one hand, we want to not fall behind on AI writ large," said Nigam Shah, chief data scientist at Stanford Health Care. "And on the other hand, the very people we need to ensure that agility are being let go."