Haphazard US CDC staff cuts leave questions around impact

A haphazard mass slashing of staff at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend has left questions around the impact of these terminations on the agency’s programming. Sources told Devex there’s still uncertainty around how this will impact global health work. “Our understanding right now is that most centers across CDC have been impacted in some way,” said Abigail Tighe of the National Public Health Coalition, a network of former CDC employees, during a press briefing. On Friday, more than 1,300 CDC employees received reduction-in-force, or RIF, notices that they would lose their jobs. But then, about 700 of those people received emails rescinding these terminations on Saturday — with the Trump administration claiming these employees were “mistakenly” placed on notice because of a coding error, said Yolanda Jacobs, president of AFGE Local 2883, a government employees’ union. This leaves more than 600 CDC employees still fired, she said, calling the administration’s move “illegal” and “a politically-motivated stunt.” Those who received termination notices will remain in their roles until Dec. 8. These firings come amid a sweeping federal shutdown after American lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on how to extend the government’s funding. The White House had warned that large-scale firings of federal workers would be a consequence of a shutdown, with cuts to funding “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” This move is inconsistent with previous U.S. government shutdowns, where federal workers were furloughed — put on leave without pay — but kept their jobs. It also comes amid the Trump administration’s broader efforts to drastically reduce the federal workforce. There have been a series of terminations of CDC employees since President Donald Trump took office. At the start of the year, CDC had over 13,000 employees, and according to AFGE Local 2883, about 3,000 workers have since been fully separated from the agency — meaning staffing was reduced by nearly a quarter. But there are an additional 1,300 CDC employees on paid administrative leave due to attempted RIFs. This means 4,300 CDC workers are no longer working — with an effective reduction in workforce of about 33%. In terms of the global health impact, “there have been a lot of reductions in force or losses throughout those global programs,” a spokesperson for AFGE Local 2883 told Devex. The spokesperson added that it’s their understanding that the entire office of the director of the Global Health Center was initially fired, but it seems that some of the people brought back include those working on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The White House’s 2026 budget proposal eliminates the Global Health Center and funding for most of its bilateral programs. “I don't think anybody's feeling good about the future of global public health work who works closely in that field right now,” the spokesperson said. Dr. Barbara Marston, who retired from CDC in 2022, told Devex that recissions of terminations may minimize the impact of this weekend's actions on global health activities, but the firings still impact trust. “Even a threat that CDC would fire the team that is coordinating the CDC efforts to respond to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in DRC will negatively impact trust and the willingness to rely on CDC experts for assistance in this response,” she said. Marston is an infectious disease physician who worked on international health with the CDC for two decades, including on HIV, tuberculosis, Ebola, and coronavirus. Her last role at CDC was deputy director for science and program in the parasitic diseases and malaria division. Previous cuts also impacted global health work. For example, CDC staff cuts in April eliminated the entire maternal and child health team in the global HIV division, Marston said. An AFGE spokesperson said that during last weekend’s round of layoffs they’ve seen cuts “across the board, across multiple programs.” In particular, this includes in communications, policy, and operations — roles essential for the functioning of the agency. “That means an across-the-board degradation in how our agency operates, rather than an issue specific thing that we can narrow down to right now,” the spokesperson said. Global health cuts, coupled with cuts to support staff in areas such as human resources and the CDC’s scientific library, and recissions of funding, all negatively impact the agency’s ability to carry out global health work, Marston said. This, combined with the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, means the U.S. is “losing trust and relationships that have in the past positioned us well to be informed early about global health threats and assist in controlling them,” Maston said. “Our world is so interconnected that health threats that arise elsewhere in the world can arrive in the US very quickly. We are losing critical health intelligence, and as a result are becoming less and less safe,” she added. Dr. Karen Remley, former director of the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, said during a press briefing that an important role the agency has traditionally played is bringing science generated at the CDC to partner countries — working to help them integrate it into their own health systems. For example, she said, one of the most important things the CDC contributed to was assisting in the introduction of folic acid to newborn babies globally, which helps prevent spina bifida — a birth defect of the spine — and significant neural tube defects. She said that as the Trump administration increasingly contracts the work of the CDC’s Global Health Center, these scientific exchanges won’t be happening. Remley said she’s looking to the U.S. Congress to demand more transparency from the Trump administration to explain its rationale behind cuts to CDC personnel and programming. “We don't even really know what the real numbers are because we don't have that open, transparent conversation,” she said. “Was there a logic behind this? Why did this happen?”