Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled plans to reduce the size of the department, cutting 10,000 full-time jobs and closing five of its ten regional offices. These cuts come in addition to the 10,000 employees who left voluntarily since President Trump’s tenure. If fully implemented, the department will shrink by about 25%, reducing its workforce to 62,000.
We are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective. We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments, while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America or AHA. This… pic.twitter.com/BlQWUpK3u7
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) March 27, 2025
Despite the workforce reductions, Kennedy emphasized that essential health services would not be impacted. The reorganization includes merging various agencies under a new subdivision, the Administration for a Healthy America, which will focus on chronic disease prevention and health resources for low-income Americans. Kennedy explained that the department had become inefficient, with rising rates of chronic disease and cancer. He aims to streamline operations while preserving the core functions of the agency.
