The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a major restructuring today, consolidating multiple agencies into a new Administration for Healthy America (AHA) and reducing its workforce by 10,000 positions. The department said the plan aims to streamline operations and improve efficiency. 

While this restructuring is intended to enhance effectiveness, it could have significant implications for agencies responsible for food safety, potentially impacting their staffing and capacity to monitor and regulate foodborne health risks.

In a video statement posted on X, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the department’s budget and staffing had grown significantly in recent years without corresponding improvements in public health.

“Over the past four years, HHS has increased by 38 percent, and its staffing increased by 17 percent, but all that money has failed to improve the health of Americans,” Kennedy said. “In fact, the rate of chronic disease and cancer increased dramatically as our department has grown.”

HHS stated that the restructuring will consolidate 28 divisions into 15, merging agencies such as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry into the newly created AHA.

“We’re going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function by merging them into a new organization, called the Administration for Healthy America, or AHA.”

According to the HHS statement, the restructuring is expected to save taxpayers nearly $2 billion annually. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Food and Drug Administration will see a reduction of 3,500 positions, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will cut 2,400. The HHS also stated that the plan will shift emergency response responsibilities to the CDC and introduce measures to address inefficiencies and redundancies.

HHS emphasized that key public health services, including Medicare, Medicaid, the FDA, and the CDC, will remain in place and are expected to operate under a new structure aimed at increasing accountability and effectiveness.

“We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer, and the American patient,” Kennedy said.

The restructuring will take place over the coming months as the department implements changes to staffing and agency functions.

Kennedy’s full statement can be viewed here.