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Approximately 600 employees at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been terminated, Fox News Digital has confirmed.
It comes as part of a major restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services announced in March. At the time, HHS said the CDC would decrease its workforce by approximately 2,400 employees, “with a focus on returning to its core mission of preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks.”
A spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees told Fox News that roughly 600 CDC employees were receiving final termination notices this week and that the cuts “are across the agency, including the Division of Violence Prevention, EEO, FOIA, the Office of Financial Resources, the offices of the chief information and chief operating officers, and more.”
The CDC confirmed the roughly 600 recent layoffs, pointing to the March announcement that also said the restructuring would involve the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) – responsible for national disaster and public health emergency response – transitioning to the CDC to enhance coordination of response efforts. HHS noted the CDC decrease would only be 1,400 including the individuals coming over from ASPR – approximately 1,000 individuals.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the restructuring of his department as part of President Donald Trump’s initiative to “Make America Healthy Again.”
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in a statement at the time. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
On April 1, HHS officials sent layoff notices to thousands of employees at the CDC and other federal health agencies, part of the department’s sweeping overhaul.
Many have been on administrative leave since then – paid but not allowed to work – as lawsuits played out.
A federal judge in Rhode Island last week issued a preliminary ruling that protected employees in several parts of the CDC, including groups dealing with smoking, reproductive health, environmental health, workplace safety, birth defects and sexually transmitted diseases. The ruling did not protect other CDC employees, and layoffs are being finalized across other parts of the agency. The terminations were effective as of Monday, employees were told.
The Associated Press reported that affected projects included work to prevent rape, child abuse and teen dating violence. The laid-off staff included people who have helped other countries to track violence against children — an effort that helped give rise to an international conference in November at which countries talked about setting violence-reduction goals.
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“There are nationally and internationally recognized experts that will be impossible to replace,” Tom Simon, the retired senior director for scientific programs at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, told the AP.
The latest cuts come less than two weeks after a man fired at least 180 bullets into the CDC’s campus and killed a police officer.
Kennedy has been pushing other policy changes at the CDC.
In May, Kennedy announced that the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC-recommended immunization schedule. The CDC currently advises what it calls “shared clinical decision-making” for children aged 6 months to 17 years who are not moderately or severely immunocompromised. This means the decision is left up to individual discussions between families and their healthcare providers, but the vaccine is not treated as routine.
Kennedy made the decision in June to fire all 17 members of the CDC’s independent advisory council on vaccines and named eight replacements in a step he said was aimed at “restoring public trust in vaccines.”
Earlier this week, the HHS secretary blasted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for going against CDC guidance to recommend that all children 6 to 23 months old receive a complete COVID-19 vaccine series.
Kennedy shared a screenshot from the pediatricians’ association’s website, which thanks pharmaceutical companies Merck, Moderna, Pfizer and Sanofi as its top corporate donors.
“These four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC recommended childhood vaccine schedule. AAP is angry that CDC has eliminated corporate influence in decisions over vaccine recommendations and returned CDC to gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine laser-focused on children’s health,” Kennedy wrote.
Fox News’ Leah Crawley and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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