CDC Tasked With Cutting $2.9B Of Its Spending On Contracts In Just Weeks

The New York Times: Trump Administration Demands Additional Cuts At C.D.C.
Alongside extensive reductions to the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Trump administration has asked the agency to cut $2.9 billion of its spending on contracts, according to three federal officials with knowledge of the matter. The administration’s cost-cutting program, called the Department of Government Efficiency, asked the public health agency to sever roughly 35 percent of its spending on contracts about two weeks ago. The C.D.C. was told to comply by April 18, according to the officials. (Mandavilli, 4/2)

The New York Times: C.D.C. Cuts Threaten To Set Back The Nation’s Health, Critics Say
The reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services shrinks the C.D.C. by 2,400 employees, or roughly 18 percent of its work force, and strips away some of its core functions. Some Democrats in Congress described the reorganization throughout H.H.S. as flatly illegal. “You cannot decimate and restructure H.H.S. without Congress,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and a member of the Senate health committee. (Mandavilli and Caryn Rabin, 4/2)

The New York Times: Inside The C.D.C., A Final ‘Love Letter’ Before Mass Layoffs
When every email inbox in the division pinged with a new message at 5:07 p.m. on Friday, the staff collectively held their breath. But it wasn’t the dismissal notification that these employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been waiting for. Quite the opposite: It was, the subject line said, a “love letter.” As I sit down to write this letter, I am not sure what the future holds. However, I do know how important it feels for me to send these words. So here goes…. (Baumgaertner Nunn, 4/2)

More on the HHS cuts —

The Washington Post: HHS Layoffs Include Head Of The World Trade Center Health Program
The Trump administration this week fired the longtime head of a federal program that provides medical benefits to first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, alarming advocates and lawmakers who said the move could disrupt care for the program’s more than 100,000 beneficiaries. John Howard, administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program, lost his job under the sweeping layoffs that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered across U.S. health agencies as the administration continues to slash the federal workforce. (Hawkins, 4/2)

Modern Healthcare: HHS Restructuring Hits PACE, Duals Offices
The Health and Human Services Department is reorganizing a handful of key programs for dually eligible enrollees and older adults, including laying off numerous staffers. HHS is shuffling how it manages care coordination for people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid under the Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office and the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. (Early, 4/2)

Stat: Trump Administration Cuts Health Policy Researchers
The Trump administration has gutted two small federal agencies filled with researchers who study how the health care system functions and how to improve it. More than half of employees at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — both part of the Department of Health and Human Services — have been laid off, according to several current and former employees. The two agencies operate on less than $600 million combined, or about 0.04% of what the federal government spends on health care. (Herman and Bannow, 4/2)

KFF Health News: What’s Lost: Trump Whacks Tiny Agency That Works To Make The Nation's Health Care Safer
Sue Sheridan’s baby boy, Cal, suffered brain damage from undetected jaundice in 1995. Helen Haskell’s 15-year-old son, Lewis, died after surgery in 2000 because weekend hospital staffers didn’t realize he was in shock. The episodes turned both women into advocates for patients and spurred research that made American health care safer. On April 1, the Trump administration slashed the organization that supported that research ... and fired roughly half of its remaining employees as part of a perplexing reorganization of the federal Health and Human Services Department. (Allen, 4/3)

NPR: Public Records Offices Gutted In HHS Layoffs
Teams that fulfilled requests for government documents lost their jobs on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration's 10,000-person staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Their work, mandated by Congress since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA, gives the public a view of the inner workings of federal health agencies. Some public records teams were entirely cut at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies on Tuesday, according to multiple current and former staffers who did not want to be named because of fears of retribution. (Lupkin, 4/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump’s HHS Layoffs In S.F. Imperil Fight Against AIDS, Experts Say
Sweeping layoffs in the federal Health and Human Services department, including shuttering the entire San Francisco branch this week, could have catastrophic consequences for HIV/AIDS services and potentially put at risk longstanding efforts to end the epidemic, public health experts say. The job cuts began Tuesday, after the Trump administration announced plans last week to slash 10,000 positions across Health and Human Services; the San Francisco office employed 318 people. (Allday, 4/2)

CNN: A City Responding To A Lead Crisis In Local Schools Reached Out To The CDC For Help. Now They Won’t Get It. 
A few months ago, a test revealed that a child in Milwaukee had elevated levels of lead in their blood. The results triggered an investigation into the family’s home, then the child’s school and then dozens more aging school buildings still riddled with lead paint. (Goodman, 4/2)

What people are saying —

Politico: Means Defends HHS Cuts, Calls Bureaucracy An ‘Utter Failure’
A top adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday defended deep job cuts at federal agencies and attacked the medical establishment, which he said is controlled by industry lobbyists in a conspiracy to keep Americans sick. Calley Means, a fixture in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement and co-founder of TrueMed, said at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit that the federal health department has been an “utter failure,” pointing to rising rates of chronic disease, lower life expectancy and a culture that is too quick to medicate patients for life without addressing the underlying causes of disease. (Hooper, 4/2)

The Hill: Sen. Jim Banks Says He 'Won't Apologize' After Telling Fired HHS Employee He ‘Probably Deserved It’
Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Wednesday said he “won’t apologize” for telling a fired Health and Human Services (HHS) employee that he “probably deserved it,” after video footage of the exchange was widely circulated on social media.  The viral video showed former HHS employee Mack Schroeder approaching Banks in a Senate office building on Tuesday and asking him about the mass layoffs at HHS. Schroeder, who noted that he personally was among the fired HHS employees, asked the senator how he would ensure residents in his state got the services they needed. (Fortinsky, 4/2)

Also —

Stat: After Trump NIH Cuts, What's Next? A New Paper May Provide Clues 
Normally, a perspective piece in a small, two-month old journal would not garner much attention. But, a paper published last week, called “A Blueprint for NIH Reform,” is circulating in academic circles as well as within the National Institutes of Health, as scientists search for hints of where the agency may go in the coming months and years. (Oza, 4/3)