The National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) calls on the Trump Administration to immediately cease the mass restructuring and firings at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its various agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). While NAPNAP understands the need to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of federal health care programs and staffing, there is a pattern of indiscriminate reductions and eliminations that is already negatively impacting children’s health.
With the recent elimination of the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which oversees asthma and air pollution, childhood lead poisoning, and cancer clusters, the public has lost epidemiologists and scientific experts who research life-threatening conditions that impact millions of children across the country. Drastically shrinking the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research means fewer experts managing new medication approvals and, perhaps more important, monitoring unexpected side effects after approval and making label changes to keep all Americans safe.
The mass restructuring and/or elimination of departments and programs, followed by policy reversals and litigation, is causing unnecessary confusion for health care providers and health care faculty, who rely on the government’s resources to enhance their knowledge, practices and teaching. Pediatric health care providers are expressing a lack of trust in the quality of leadership, resources and communications at HHS, an agency that has set the gold standard for health care here in the U.S. and around the world for decades.
We urge the Administration to consult with knowledgeable experts who fully understand the role, scope and outcomes of federal agencies before dismantling critically important components of our scientific and health care infrastructure. These destructive actions have the potential to destroy our country’s leadership in science and health care, which has driven the innovation necessary to improve our children’s short- and long-term health outcomes.
April 7, 2025
