On March 10, the Trump Administration abruptly canceled all NIH funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS). The Society is alarmed about this decision and its impact. We sent a letter to Congress and a letter to the Administration urging them to immediately restore the funding. We issued a press release to the media and all congressional offices calling for restoration of this program.
We also have been working closely with the co-chairs of the Diabetes Caucus to restore this critical funding. This week, the co-chairs of the House Diabetes Caucus, Representatives Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), sent a bipartisan letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Acting Director Matthew J. Memoli echoing our concerns and urging them to restore funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program DPPOS. In their letter, the co-chairs expressed concern about the prolonged disruptions to the critical research being conducted at 30 institutions across 21 states.
We continue to advocate for the administration to restore this funding, and we need your help. Because the funding cut is tied to a dispute with one university, many congressional offices do not understand that the bulk of the funding is spread across the country or that funding has not resumed despite an agreement between Columbia University and the White House. Consequently, Every Senator and Representative needs to hear from their constituents that it is critical this program is restored immediately. Join us by taking action on our online campaign.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced March 27 a major restructuring of its health related agencies and that it will cut 20,000 full-time federal jobs.
The cuts include employees who have taken the administration's Fork in the Road offer and early retirement, plus an additional reduction in force of 10,000 jobs.
HHS is an umbrella agency that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other smaller divisions.
The restructuring will include the creation of a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), which is intended to "more efficiently coordinate chronic care and disease prevention programs," according to an HHS fact sheet. It will consolidate several existing agencies.
The cuts include 3,500 full-time employees at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, 1,200 at NIH and three hundred at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to the fact sheet. It states that the new job cuts at the FDA will not affect drug, medical device or food reviewers or inspectors and that the reorganization will not impact Medicare or Medicaid.
The Endocrine Society issued a statement expressing alarm that these sweeping decisions were made unilaterally by the administration without consultation with Congress or the public health and scientific communities. We urged the administration to work with Congress and the health and research communities to improve the efficiency of health-related agencies in a transparent, thoughtful manner and cautioned that the current unilateral approach risks harm to the public’s health and research enterprise.
On March 25, the U.S. Senate voted along party lines (53 to 47) to confirm Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya as the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Bhattacharya is a health economist and was most recently a professor at Stanford University. At Dr. Bhattacharya’s hearing earlier this month, he shared his goals for NIH. These include focusing NIH research on addressing chronic disease, ensuring scientific data reliability, and establishing a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent. The Society hopes to work with Dr. Bhattacharya on issues of mutual concern such as preventing and treating chronic diseases including diabetes and obesity.
We rely on your voice to advocate for our policy priorities. Join us to show our strength as a community that cares about endocrinology. Contact your US representatives or European Members of Parliament through our online platform. Take action and make a difference today.
