THE Department of Health and Human Services’ The budget request for the 2026 financial year consolidates the 28 divisions of the department at 15 to make way for a new “public health institution”.
The new agency, the administration of a healthy America, has a budget of $ 20.6 billion designed to support Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Agenda “to return America healthy”. This includes funding – and reduction considerably – funds for chronic centers of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and global health centers as well as some of the institutes that are currently part of the National Institutes of Health.
The administration for a healthy America, or AHA, says that it will take a “deep cause” approach to the prevention of chronic diseases, according to the agency’s budget request, published last Friday. But the budget proposes to reduce the financing of all the CDC Chronic Disease Center programs and make significant reductions in existing primary care, mental health and environmental health programs.
The cuts reduce the CDC budget of almost $ 9.2 billion in 20024 to $ 4.2 billion. At least 20%, or 1 billion dollars, from the drop in financing, moves to Aha.
The cuts will have a fallout effect on states and cities. THE vast majority CDC financing is discretionary and channeled towards national and local health services. Last year, these departments received $ 4.5 billion in CDC financing “Promote and protect health in their communities”.
And even when the funds are maintained, the restructuring could have a cost, according to Richard Frank, director of the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.
“The CDC has developed a lot of human capital over the years,” said Frank. The agency’s infectious response, involving surveillance teams and experts sent to the source of an epidemic, is “not something you learn overnight that you can simply move easily without disturbing its efficiency”.
The budget request also reduces the NIH by around 40% and dissolves agencies, including the administration of the drug and mental health services and the Health Resources Service Administration.
“The budget reflects the necessary reforms to put health expenses on a sustainable tax path and offers policies to make America again in good health,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard wrote in a statement to CBS News. “The United States remains the most sickly nation despite the expenses of $ 4.5 billion per year in health care, resulting in explosive debt which constitutes a critical threat to our country as well as the worsening of health results.”
Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the “Chronic Children’s Disease Crisis” in America. It was a central objective of his commission “Make America Healthy Again” report. The report was critical To cite studies that do not exist, including false information and the omission of the engines established of chronic diseases in children that the health authorities are already working to tackle.
Prevention of chronic diseases
The last budget request would eliminate the chronic disease prevention center and the health promotion of the CDC, for which $ 1.4 billion was assigned during the 2024 financial year. Instead, AHA would finance primary care, environmental health, mental health and nutrition programs. According to the ministry, this would prevent chronic source diseases, rather than finance individual cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other diseases as CDC Chronic Disease Center did.
Nearly 70 organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, signed a letter To the leaders of the credit committees of the Chamber and the Senate in mid-May, after the disclosure of a previous version of the budget. They expressed their opposition to the elimination by the budget of the CDC chronic disease center.
Center programs “work with states and territories to prevent diseases, detect it early and manage it effectively,” said the letter. Eliminate them “would destabilize public health systems at all levels and compromise decades of progress”.
Global health
The budget demand from the 2026 financial year eliminates the CDC World Health Center and rather allocates $ 239 million to world health protection, as part of the broader budget line of “CDC -scale activities”. The Global Health Center spent $ 711 million during the year 2024.
The center’s defect is preparing for dismantling by the Trump administration of the American Agency for International Development and the withdrawal of the World Health Organization. These actions will have consequences for Americans in addition to those abroad, said Janeen Madan Keller, deputy director of the World Health Policy Program at the Center for Global Development, a Washington, DC reflection group
“According to our own experience of epidemics and pandemics, we know that infectious diseases do not respect borders,” said Keller. “It is really important that we have the ability to stop these epidemics on their traces before reaching our border.”
Other programs
AHA consolidates the federal prevention and research of HIV / AIDS. It reduces $ 794 million in CDC financing for the prevention of inner HIV / AIDS and takes up the HIV / AIDS programs from other agencies. In total, AHA allocates a combined number of $ 2.7 billion to the virus and the resulting disease – nearly a billion dollars less than these programs were assigned during the year 2024.
Other CDC distant centers include its centers for congenital malformations, development, disability and health, prevention and control of injuries, as well as safety and health at work. Part of the financing of these centers was moved to broader programs within the AHA, according to the budget proposal.
Before the budget was adopted, it will be examined by the Congress sub-commies before the Chamber and the Senate prepares their own budgetary resolutions later this year.