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- By Neely Bardwell
After Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK, Jr) met with Tribal leaders last month, he committed to improving the Indian Health Service (IHS). Now, he announced the department is cutting 10,000 employees and HHS attempted to reassign some of the health official to IHS.
RFK, who said the Indian Health Service has “always been treated as the redheaded stepchild” by his agency, has laid off employees in programs aimed at supporting Native people, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Tribes initiative, and closed five regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services that cover an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s Native population.
Abigail Echo-Hawk, an epidemiologist and citizen of the Pawnee Nation who is a leader of the Seattle Indian Health Board, told the New York Times she was especially concerned about the C.D.C.’s Healthy Tribes Program, which provides grant funding that supports her work.
As “a friend of Indian Country,” she said, Mr. Kennedy “has eloquently stated that one of his first focuses is going to be on chronic disease prevention for American Indians and Alaska Natives — which is why this move is so puzzling.”
Last week, RFK ordered the reassignment of high-ranking health officials to Indian Health Service locations in the Western part of the Nation. These staff have no experience in IHS, and their skill sets do not align with the needs of the agency.
Former Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), who is now running for New Mexico Governor, says she finds the reorganization, layoffs and transfers disrespectful to Indian Country.
“It’s disrespectful of the I.H.S., it’s disrespectful of the people who have dedicated their careers to HHS and to our country, fighting disease and regulating the things that need to be regulated,” Haaland told the New York Times. “I just don’t understand what they think they’re doing.”
Native Americans have a shorter life expectancy and higher rates of disease than other racial/ ethnic groups, according to an analysis published last year by the National Council of Urban Indian Health. White people born in 2021 are expected to live an average of 11 years longer than their American Indian and Alaska Native peers. Natives also die disproportionately from chronic liver disease, diabetes, homicide, and suicide, according to the Indian Health Service. IHS is already chronically understaffed and underfunded. IHS needs doctors and nurses who are familiar with the unique needs of Native people.
“I won’t mince words, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing Trump and Musk’s bidding and it is causing chaos in New Mexico,” said Haaland. “The health care system in this country is broken, but firing employees who help New Mexicans get Medicaid and cutting funding and staff for cancer cure research is unacceptable.”
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, released a statement questioning the recent changes to IHS.
“If this administration truly cared about fixing IHS’s staff vacancy crisis, why did it try to cut the IHS workforce by nearly 1,000 employees just months ago? Why is it pushing to cut Medicaid, a critical funding source for IHS, to pay for tax cuts for billionaires? And why did it give high-level career employees just hours to decide whether to uproot their lives for jobs they never applied for in places they do not know?,” questioned Schatz.
“If the administration actually wants to support IHS, it should talk to Tribes about what their communities actually need – doctors, nurses, dentists, and other clinicians – not use them as political pawns in its effort to purge the federal workforce in the name of so-called government efficiency.,” Schatz continued.
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