The Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced a program of job cuts and agency reorganization aimed at dismantling what remains of the public health infrastructure in the US.

In an accompanying “fact sheet,” HHS said the staff reductions would come from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with 3,500 full-time jobs cut; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with 2,400 full-time jobs cut; the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with 1,200 full-time jobs cut; and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), with 300 full-time jobs cut.

Meanwhile, a study by The Commonwealth Fund and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University is predicting that the DOGE cuts to Medicaid will lead to the loss of 477,000 healthcare jobs in 2026 alone. The US House of Representatives passed a budget bill in February that calls for $880 billion in cuts over 10 years, the majority of which would come from Medicaid.