In the middle of ADM Sent to the amazed employees of the Ministry of Health and Social Services on Tuesday was another surprise: some of them, including the best officials of the National Institutes of Health, had the opportunity to transfer to the Indian health service.
“The Indian Health Service (IHS) has an untenable vacation rate of around 30%. This poorly served community deserves the highest quality of service, and HHS needs people like you to provide this service, “said an e-mail signed by Thomas J. Nagy Jr., an assistant assistant secretary for human resources for human resources in HHS who went to certain employees who were placed on assistant leave on Wednesday.
E-mail included a list with chips of IHS territories where these jobs would be offered, in particular: Alaska; Albuquerque, nm; Bemidji, minn.; Billings, Mont.; the Grande Plains region; the Navajo reserve in the southwest of the United States; and Oklahoma. He asked employees to indicate a preference for resettlement between these regions by 5 p.m. on Wednesday at 5 p.m..
Those who have received the offer, according to reports and publications on social networks, include Brian King, the best tobacco regulator at Food and Drug Administration; Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases; Emily Erbelding, who directed the division of microbiology and infectious diseases in Niaid; Diana Bianchi, director of the National Institute for Children’s Health and Human Development; and Dylan George, director of the CDC Center for forecasting and epidemic analytics.
We do not know why some employees – including a lot of time and perhaps more difficult to reject because they are commanded agents of the US public health service – have received the offer and no others, how to accept the offer or refuse it could affect social benefits such as the starting indemnity, and what work of these regulators and researchers would do within the IHS. Stat asked for clarification on these HHS issues.
“I’m just going to say it, I think it’s a way to try to get people leaving,” said Phil Huang, director of Dallas Health and Human Services, in press information on cups on Tuesday. Although he highlighted the importance of the IHS, he said that the way people have received such short deadlines to respond almost impossible for people to take the offer.
Jeremy Berg, former director and editor -in -chief of the NIH, who closely followed the cuts and changes in federal health agencies, said he had the greatest respect for the work of the IHS, but said that this decision had suggested to him that those responsible for the Trump administration “are trying to humiliate people”.
The offer was encountered by many familiar observers with IHS and its needs. Although it is true that the agency has a Long -standing vacation rateThese openings are largely intended for positions such as doctors, nurses and other care providers, not researchers, analysts and managers.
“I do not know why they are transferred to the IHS,” said an indigenous scientist who has followed changes at the federal level which has an impact on his community. “It’s already too heavy of bureaucracy.”
THE IHSAn agency within the HHS is the main federal health care supplier to the American Indians and Alaska. It has a budget of around $ 8 billion.
The scientist, who asked for anonymity to protect the work he does which implies federal agencies, said that the HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seems to have an “affinity for the natives”, noting that expected Cups to IHS probationary employees were canceled by Kennedy after the tribal leaders spoke. During confirmation hearings, Kennedy told senators that he Name an assistant secretary of HHS America “To ensure that all the decisions we make in our agency are aware of the impacts on First Nations”, and that it ensured that the indigenous peoples are included in clinical trials.
But the scientist added that the large-scale anti-scale efforts of the Trump administration negatively affected programs to support and train indigenous scientists. “It’s a mixed message,” he said. “It seems to be everywhere.”
Tribal leaders in the congress have concerned with concern On the way in which HHS cuts would have an impact on the health of tribal populations.
Many employees, due to the family or other obligations, will not be able to uproot themselves in distant locations.
“I think it is a way to give the impression that they care about the IHS, when in reality they should know little if the people who receive these offers will be able to take them,” said Sam Bagenstos, a former HHS lawyer in the Biden years and now a law professor at the University of Michigan.
Others said that a plan to suddenly send certain employees to the IHS was deeply disrespectful towards the important role of the IHS and the expertise necessary to work there. “Our Indian health service is a really important part of our public health infrastructure, but it should not be used as a pawn where you should really place people in the Indian health service which is really supposed to work with tribal countries and that you are confident to do so,” said Sharon Gilmartin, executive director of the United States.
“I find this insulting,” said an IHS employee who provides care in a hospital in Western state and asked to remain anonymous to protect his job. “The way it is presented as an option for people makes IHS work even more unwanted.”
“Or perhaps this highlights the sacrifices that many make to work for IHS: living at a distance, in chronic sub-effective and under the resources. If it is so undesirable, then let’s improve the IH: what the Amerindians deserve.”
A CDC official described the offers to join the distant IHS territories as a kind of exile. “How to insulting the IHS and the directors of the center”, this civil servant told CBS News. “The IHS sites fill critical gaps, it is not an American archipelago Goulag.”
Elizabeth Cooney and Megan Molteni contributed the reports.