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Thousands were laid off Tuesday from the Atlanta-based CDC, dealing a blow to the city’s public health workforce, local, national and global research on illness prevention, and likely the city’s economy.
The CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, last week announced a sweeping reorganization that would result in about 2,400 “reductions in force” at the CDC.
Kevin Caron, a health scientist in the CDC’s Office of Smoking and Health, received notice via email early Tuesday that he had been terminated. He spoke to Healthbeat as he drove to the agency’s Chamblee campus to retrieve his belongings, including awards for his work.
Caron was instructed not to come in, but then received notice about 10:30 a.m. that his access to the office could be cut off by noon. He is on administrative leave until June 2 and was told to hold onto his work laptop for now.
Caron said the majority of the staff at the Office of Smoking and Health – over 90 people – was laid off. He was worried about the work they will leave undone. The office is “essentially not functional anymore,” Caron said.
The team’s research saved lives, he said, recalling their discovery in 2019 that a chemical was causing serious lung injuries and deaths in teenagers who vaped.
“Smoking is the number one, the leading cause, of preventable death in the U.S.”, and Caron’s entire office was working on it.
“Children will be vulnerable because they’re the ones who are most frequently targeted by the industry and most susceptible to becoming addicted to the use of tobacco products,” Caron said.
On the home front, Caron and his wife are expecting their first child on April 12, and his wife’s maternity leave has started.
“I’m very worried about what kind of world she’s going to come into, and worried about my own … financial security,” Caron said of the impending birth. “But I’m also worried about the bigger picture.”
Specimens put into deep freeze as cuts disrupt labs
Kevin Pettus also lost his job Tuesday after more than three decades at the CDC. Pettus worked as a clinical microbiologist and in syphilis serology as a unit lead at the Laboratory Reference and Research Branch of the Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention.
He was able to retrieve his belongings from the agency’s campus on Clifton Road but said he’s worried about the future of the lab — and the work that it did.
“We were just told to place whatever specimens that we are working on into our long-term freezer …. with the hopes that somehow this will all be recanted, and they will ask us to come back and continue our research,” Pettus said.
Lab instruments would become unusable without daily maintenance, he said.
“I don’t see how this is saving the taxpayers money. [It] is going to cost them so much more in either repairing or even discarding some of these materials and supplies,” Pettus said.
The CDC lab provided important testing services to state and local health departments, Pettus said.
The changes will “dramatically impact healthcare and the testing process in the very near future,” Pettus said. “I’m not sure what these institutions and public health labs … are going to do moving forward.”
CDC job losses could impact Atlanta economy
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said the CDC layoffs were in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for “large-scale” terminations.
The reorganization will involve moving two CDC centers – the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Research and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health – to a newly created branch of HHS, the Administration for a Healthy America. Meanwhile, 1,000 employees at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response will move to the CDC.
Lists circulating among CDC employees and retirees on Monday suggested that many parts of the agency had been impacted by the layoffs, including the divisions of violence and injury prevention, the Office of Health Equity, the asthma and air quality branch, the global division of HIV and tuberculosis, the division of reproductive health in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
“There’s a growing sense of uncertainty and not feeling whole in this nation,” said Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens on Friday of the impending reductions. “Cuts at the CDC impact health, national security, community wellness, jobs in Atlanta, and faith in our day to day.”
The CDC employed about 13,000 people, with 10,000 in Georgia, spokesperson Jason McDonald said in November.
“It has a specifically devastating impact on jobs in this area, and these are thousands of jobs,” said Barb Marston, who leads an informal group of CDC retirees who have been organizing and rallying each week to support the agency’s workers.
“Ordinarily, if somebody had something that was going to create thousands of jobs, they’d celebrate that as good for Georgia’s economy. Here we have a situation where we’re losing thousands of jobs. That’s obviously going to be bad for the economy,” Marston said.
The impact of the job losses will include the loss of employees’ spending on items like health care, housing, going out to eat and entertainment, said Peter Bluestone, of the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State University.
“Firms will be reluctant to make investments with an unpredictable future going forward, and job seekers may be reluctant to apply to the CDC again, with its future potentially uncertain,” Bluestone said.
Councilmember Jason Dozier last month sponsored an Atlanta City Council resolution calling on local and state governments to hire employees laid off by the CDC and other federal agencies. The resolution was adopted unanimously.
He said Tuesday he’s especially worried about the HIV epidemic in Atlanta.
“Atlanta is especially vulnerable to these cuts as our city has been and will continue to be on the frontline of combating the spread of HIV. But we need the CDC’s help in that fight. Black and LGBTQ+ communities in Atlanta are disproportionately affected by HIV and the CDC funds programs specifically designed to address these disparities,” Dozier said.
Georgia health dept. to lose $334.4M in federal funds
HHS last week cancelled billions in grants to state and local health departments, including funding initially provided for Covid relief and funds for mental health services.
The Georgia Department of Public Health said late Tuesday the cuts would result in a loss of at least $334.4 million in federal funds.
“There will be minimal impacts to essential core public health services,” DPH spokesperson Nancy Nydam said. The canceled grants were set to expire between May 2025 and July 2027.
Covid services will be reduced or continued, including testing kiosks, mobile vaccine deployments, community-based vaccine services, and vaccine and testing registration systems, Nydam said.
DPH also laid off about 170 Covid contract tracers on Thursday, Nydam said, as well as 10 other staffers.
“The impact on district-level staff is still being analyzed, with each district conducting its own review to determine local effects,” Nydam said.
The cuts could result in a $467,000 cut to the Cobb and Douglas county public health budget, leaders said last week.
This story has been updated to include a second interview with a CDC staffer and figures from the Georgia Department of Public Health on federal funding reductions released late Tuesday.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
