According to multiple officials, nearly half of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s staff working on developmental disabilities and birth defects was laid off this month, including teams conducting research on adults with cognitive disabilities and sickle cell disease.
The cuts are likely to halt work on collecting data for studying Americans with sickle cell disease, a painful blood disorder that primarily affects Black families, as well as supporting testing for its more dangerous complications.
“If it is not restored, it will jeopardize life-saving public health programs, halt critical research, and increase avoidable hospitalizations, complications, and deaths.
“Its elimination contradicts the Administration’s stated commitment to addressing chronic disease,” said Dr. Belinda Avalos, president of the American Society of Hematology, in a statement released this week.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed willingness to restore some of the programs he eliminated, such as the CDC’s lead poisoning experts, though they have yet to be reinstated.
In addition to the blood disorders division, Kennedy’s layoffs eliminated the entire leadership team at the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, which housed it. Support staff for the center and its Disability and Health Promotion Branch were also reduced.
That branch oversaw a federal database that tracked adult disability rates at the state level. The data is used by researchers and health authorities to target resources where they are most needed, as well as to study disability patterns and trends.
A now-stalled data release was expected to shed light on a recent increase in cognitive disability among young adults, according to an official.
“There appears to be a step back to see developmental disabilities, such as autism, as occurring only in childhood. “The branch provided critical public health expertise for disability in adulthood, where people spend the majority of their lives,” said a current CDC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It has also discontinued work on the congressionally mandated Early Hearing Detection and Intervention programs, which fund state and other efforts to screen and diagnose children’s hearing problems.
According to the center’s data, nearly all newborns in the United States are now screened for hearing loss, an increase from less than half 25 years ago. States had also collaborated with the branch on efforts to boost follow-up rates.
The cuts also included CDC staff in charge of a partnership with the Special Olympics, which was founded by Kennedy’s aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and is now chaired by his cousin, Timothy Shriver. The CDC program conducted health screenings and gathered information on people with intellectual disabilities.
Only a few researchers remain at the center, which includes the agency’s Child and Development and Disability Branch and Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders.
This includes researchers working on the CDC’s autism monitoring network, whose findings Kennedy has frequently cited as evidence that autism rates are rising.
Many of the remaining staff, as well as those from the CDC’s chronic disease and drug overdose centers, are expected to be merged into Kennedy’s new Administration for a Healthy America, according to two officials.
HHS had previously stated that AHA would bring together teams from multiple agencies, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Matt Buzzelli, the Trump administration’s chief of staff at the agency, has told aides that Kennedy sees the AHA as a “flagship” agency for Kennedy’s legacy, housing the majority of his priorities for combating chronic disease.