The president of the American Dental Association (ADA) expressed alarm Tuesday after scores of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees received layoff notices Monday night and Tuesday morning.
“I am disappointed with the Department of Government Efficiency’s targeting of oral health workforce reductions,” said Brett Kessler, D.D.S., ADA president.
The U.S. administration announced Thursday that 10,000 employees would be laid off, along with another 10,000 through HHS initiatives, including early retirement. The administration also released a fact sheet titled HHS’ Transformation to Make America Healthy Again, outlining plans to reduce the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees.
While acknowledging it will be a “painful period for the HHS,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added, “We’re going to do more with less,” according to a report from The New York Times. One of Kennedy’s justifications for the cuts is that chronic disease rates rose under the Biden administration, despite a 38 per cent increase in the HHS budget and a 17 per cent rise in staffing.
‘Blunt actions do not make Americans healthy’
However, the ADA said it would welcome the “opportunity to make America healthy” with Kennedy and Trump but urged the two to “immediately reverse these cuts and restore critical public health programs.”
It also highlighted that reductions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has a Division of Oral Health (DOH), will impact oral health services.
According to the fact sheet, the CDC will reduce its workforce by approximately 2,400 employees, with a “focus on returning to its core mission of preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks.”
“Blunt actions like this do not make Americans healthy. They make us sick. The mouth is the gateway to the body. When the mouth is healthier, the body is too,” Kessler said.
CDC’s oral health role
In its statement, the ADA said the CDC’s oral health division provides leadership to improve national oral health programs that support proven prevention initiatives, such as oral health literacy, community water fluoridation and dental sealants. The division also provides guidelines on safety and infection control for dental practice settings and delivers essential data that helps track oral health progress nationwide and informs policy development.
“I see in my patients that when the mouth is ignored, the body suffers, inflammation increases, compromised people get sicker, and our collective quality of life plummets,” Kessler said.
Other cuts will affect departments that overlap with oral health. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), considered the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, will see its workforce reduced by 1,200 employees, with procurement, human resources and communications centralized across its 27 institutes and centres. Part of NIH is the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), but it remains unclear how NIDCR will be affected.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees dental coverage under Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicare Advantage plans, will see its workforce reduced by approximately 300 employees, with a focus on eliminating minor duplication across the agency. “This reorganization will not impact Medicare and Medicaid services,” the fact sheet said.
U.S. News, meanwhile, reported that an email notifying union leaders of the cuts stated they would likely take effect on May 27. The email added that the reductions were “primarily aimed at administrative positions, including human resources, information technology, procurement and finance.”
