About 10,000 people in the Ministry of Health and Human Services of the United States were fired this week as part of a massive restructuring plan.
In a post on the X on Tuesday afternoon, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said the cuts were “a difficult time for all of us”, but that “we need to change the course” because the Americans “get sick every year”.
An employee at the National Health Institutes with knowledge on the issue he asked not to be baptized, told ABC News that the cuts were “bloodshed throughout the HHS”, with entire offices being fired.
Sources told the ABC News that the affected offices include the greater part of the Smoking and Health Disease Control and Prevention, key offices at the Tobacco Products Center, the greater part of the National Institute for Safety and Labor Health and the entire team to help reproductive technology.
Then Kennedy told ABC News on Thursday that some programs would be restored soon because they were wrongly shortened.
In a video statement published on the X before the cuts, Kennedy said he plans to bring to the agency a “clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve the agency’s morals.”
In the six-minute clip, Kennedy claims that the United States is the “most painful nation in the world”, with the rate of chronic diseases and cancer, they are increasing dramatically and the duration of Americans is dropped-although Kennedy did not present any data in his video to support these claims.
Smoking and the use of tobacco products contribute to both chronic diseases and cancer – and the offices that deal with these problems are among those who have been gutted in the last moves of Kennedy.
While Kennedy is correct in his claim that some chronic illnesses and cancer have increased, said public health experts – and data shows – the country has made great progress, overcoming diseases, including a decrease in the degree of cancer mortality and that life expectancy increases.
“The gutting of the public health system, while claiming to fight the disease, is a dangerous contradiction,” says Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation director at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as an associate of ABC News.
“We have to focus on strengthening – we do not undress – the public health system if we are seriously involved in chronic illness,” Brownstein continued. “The dismantling of a key infrastructure will only bring us back to the fight to keep Americans healthy.”
Minister of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., arrives before President Donald Trump talks during an event to announce new tariffs in the White House Rose Garden, April 2, 2025 in Washington.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The American Life Lifeline is increasing
In the publication of X, Dr. Ashish Ja, the White House response coordinator Covid-19 from 2022 to 2023, said Kennedy was incorrect in his statement that Americans were getting richer.
“So much of what is here is wrong,” he writes. “Americans do not get sick every year. After a devastating pandemic, life expectancy begins to increase again.”
Between 2022 and 2023, the age percentage of age adjusted to nine of the leading causes of death in the United States, according to a December 2024 report by CDC.
This includes a decrease in heart disease, involuntary injuries, stroke, chronic diseases of the lower respirator, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis and Covid-19.
In addition, the age -specific mortality rate dropped from 2022 to 2023. For all age groups aged 5 years or more, it was established in the CDC report.
The report also found that the life expectancy in the United States is beginning to rise again after falling in every state in the United States in the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The life expectancy in 2023 reached its highest level since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the CDC report. The data show that the life expectancy for the US population is 78.4 years in 2023, which has increased by 0.9 years since 2022.
The decline of age-adapted mortality is largely due to a decrease in mortality from Covid-19, heart disease, involuntary injuries and diabetes.
“The allegations that Americans become softened every year just don’t stay,” Brownstein told ABC News. “Life expectancy rises again after the pandemic and we see a decline in cancer, cardiovascular and overdose mortality.”
Obesity increases in children, decreases in adults
Kennedy said he wanted to deal with the obesity epidemic, including childhood obesity.
Studies show that obesity is increasing in children in the United States and occurs at a young age, with approximately one in five children and teens in the United States having obesity, according to CDC.
A 2022 study from Emori University, which studied data from 1998 to 2016, found that childhood obesity through kindergarten through fifth grade students became more severe, exposing more children at risk of health effects.
However, Ja’s pointed to X’s publication that “even the percentages of obesity are platitized and begin to decrease” in adults.
For the first time in more than a decade, adult obesity percentages in the US can be trending down, with their number slightly declining from 46% in 2022 to 45.6% in 2023, according to a study published in the Jama Health Forum in December 2024.
The study examined the body mass index, a generally accepted method of evaluating obesity of 16.7 million adults in the United States over a period of 10 years. The average BMI increased annually during this period to 30.24, which was considered obesity until it was paid in 2022, after which it slightly dropped to 30.21 in 2023.
“The latest studies that co -authored in Jama show that the degree of obesity in adults is plastered and even start moving down,” says Brownstein, co -author of the study. “This progress reflects many types of long -term investment in public health, which Reorg puts at risk.”
Chronic illness
Kennedy has dealt with chronic diseases in the cornerstone of his platform “Make America again healthy”.
In the last two decades, the spread of chronic conditions has been steadily increasing, according to a study in 2024 conducted by researchers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.
The signaling for the headquarters of the Ministry of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seen on April 2, 2025 in Washington, Colombia.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
“The growing part of people in America deal with multiple chronic conditions; 42% have [two] or more, and 12% have at least [five]”The authors wrote.
However, the study also found that the spread of chronic disease varies depending on the geographical location and socio -economic status. Residents who live in areas with the most spreading of chronic illness also face a number of contributing social, economic and environmental barriers, the study found.
A 2022 study by CDC found that chronic cigarette smoking diseases include respiratory and cardiovascular disease, as well as cancer and diabetes.
Cancer coefficients have “increased dramatically”
Kennedy is correct, saying that the rate of cancer in the United States has increased, with the incidence of morbidity has increased to 17 cancers in the younger generations, according to a joint study in 2024 by the American Society for Combating Cancer, Care Alberta and the University of Calgary.
A significant increase in the incidence of incidence for many cancers among women and the higher junctions is observed, studies show.
The incidence ratio among women between the ages of 50 and 64 has exceeded those among men, according to a report of 2025, published in the Journal of the American Society for Combating Cancer.
In addition, the percentage of cancer among women under 50 is 82% higher than among men under 50, which is from 51% in 2002, the report found in the report.
However, as the frequency of cancer has increased, cancer mortality has decreased.
A 2025 report from the US Cancer Society found that the age coefficient of age -adjusted cancer dropped by the PIC in 1991. By 34% by 2022, to a large extent due to smoking, progress in treatment and early detection of some cancers.
However, more work must be done and the differences are still ongoing. For example, indigenous Americans have the highest cancer mortality of any racial or ethnic group in the United States
In addition, black Americans have a two-time higher mortality rate than white Americans for prostate, stomach and uterus, the last of which is uterine mucosa cancer.
Dr. Jay-Sheri Alan Akambaza is a family medicine and a doctor in preventive medicine at the Mayo Clinic and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Dr. Nicky Iranpur on ABC News, Cheyenne Haslett and Will McDuffie have contributed to this report.
