Food safety and health groups are calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to reinstate lead experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than a month after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. implied they were erroneously targeted for layoffs.
The entire staff of the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program has been on administrative leave since April 1, when they were sent reduction-in-force notices as part of a massive restructuring at HHS. The notices said the staff would be terminated by June.
Days later, Kennedy himself indicated that staff there could be “reinstated,” but no staff have been called back.
Now, a coalition of food safety and health groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University, are calling on Kennedy to bring back the federal experts in the hopes that bringing attention to the issue now will prevent the program’s budget from being gutted.
