Somewhat-known federal company that sends greater than $12 billion yearly to help neighborhood well being facilities, dependancy remedy companies, and workforce initiatives for America’s neediest folks has been hobbled by the Trump administration’s staffing purges.
The cuts are “just a bit astonishing,” mentioned Carole Johnson, who beforehand led the Well being Assets and Providers Administration. She left the company in January with the administration change and has described the sweeping workers cuts as a “huge risk” to the company’s skill to distribute billions of {dollars} in grants to hospitals, clinics, nonprofits, and different organizations nationwide.
Since February, a few quarter of employees at HRSA — together with analysts, auditors, scientists, grant managers, and nursing consultants — have left, in accordance with a KFF Well being Information evaluation.
The company, headquartered in a nondescript gray-and-glass workplace constructing tucked into facet streets in Rockville, Maryland, employed about 2,700 staffers in early 2025. Staff labored behind the scenes to handle and monitor hundreds of initiatives nationwide that fund major well being suppliers, HIV/AIDS remedy and prevention, maternal and baby care applications, rural hospitals, and workforce coaching.
Sarah Jane Tribble/KFF Well being Information
On the bottom, HRSA’s grants have helped create telehealth initiatives for moms in rural New Mexico, funded workforce coaching for Indigenous nurses in South Dakota, and supported Wholesome Begin applications for expectant moms and infants in locations like rural Georgia.
Ryan Alcorn, a co-founder and the chief govt of GrantExec, an organization that helps organizations match and apply for funding, mentioned each American advantages from the applications HRSA’s funding helps: “When the protection internet fails, hospitals turn out to be overwhelmed, unpaid prices rise, and premiums go up for everybody.”
A number of former HRSA leaders, who’ve been in contact with staff, confirmed the magnitude of the cuts estimated by KFF Well being Information. Johnson mentioned she believes the precise variety of employees misplaced is bigger.
Greater than 700 employees had been fired or selected to depart from February by means of the tip of June. The evaluation relies on knowledge from the HHS worker listing, which can not embody employees who opted out of being listed, and might not be a precise rely of the employee roster, which is in flux.
Johnson, who’s now a senior fellow on the Century Basis, and several other different former staff interviewed by KFF Well being Information mentioned they’re involved that particular applications will probably be eradicated, but additionally that lowered staffing might have an effect on ongoing program oversight. The company’s workforce ethos, Johnson mentioned, is one by which “if there have been two folks left at HRSA, they might work across the clock to attempt to get the cash out.”
For a minimum of one program, revealed throughout a tense second on Capitol Hill in July, cash to assist low-income and minority college students has already stopped flowing to faculties and universities. The Scholarship for Deprived College students program, established by means of congressional laws, helped faculties pay for college kids to coach to turn out to be dentists, doctor assistants, midwives, and nurses — all of whom are briefly provide in rural and a few city areas. Candice Chen, performing affiliate administrator of HRSA’s well being workforce bureau, confirmed the company “did have competitions that had been canceled.”
When U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) requested whether or not they had been canceled by the Trump administration, Chen paused earlier than talking once more: “Properly, the funding selections had been made throughout the administration.”
Requested in regards to the canceled funding, officers from a number of faculties declined to remark. Patrick Gonzales, a spokesperson for the College of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, mentioned in an emailed assertion that the varsity is “serving to college students navigate this transition with readability and care.”
U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) has referred to as for Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation or firing, “whichever one comes first,” saying there was “no defensible reply” to eliminating hundreds of employees throughout federal businesses.
In April, practically a dozen Democratic senators despatched a letter to Kennedy demanding solutions in regards to the mass firings, noting HRSA is the “major company tasked with enhancing entry to well being look after susceptible populations.”
HHS didn’t reply to the senators’ letter. Kennedy and the Division of Well being and Human Providers “has refused to reply primary questions on why the administration performed mass firings on this workplace,” mentioned Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.).
President Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 price range eliminates HRSA in addition to a few of its applications, together with grants to rural hospitals, workforce coaching, Ryan White HIV/AIDS applications, and emergency medical companies for kids. HRSA spokesperson Andrea Takash mentioned in an emailed response that HHS is “enterprise organizational adjustments that help a number of targets whereas making certain continuity of important companies.”
HRSA continues to course of new funding bulletins and awards for the well being facilities, workforce applications, baby and maternal well being initiatives, and “many extra of our crucial applications and companies,” Takash mentioned.
HRSA’s largest bureau helps hundreds of neighborhood well being facilities that serve over 31 million folks nationwide. Earlier than the tip of September, the company’s grants are nonetheless scheduled to pay out billions extra to well being clinics and different organizations nationwide.
Cuts to well being facilities might come underneath extra scrutiny as a result of their funding has “lots of bipartisan” help, mentioned Celli Horstman, a senior analysis affiliate on the Commonwealth Fund, a well being analysis nonprofit. HRSA’s funding, which incorporates Part 330 grants, goes to “preserving the doorways open” at federally certified well being facilities nationwide, Horstman mentioned.
An extra 42% of well being heart funding comes from Medicaid, a federal and state insurance coverage program that covers folks with low incomes and people with disabilities, she mentioned. Congress just lately voted to scale back Medicaid funding.
Joe Stevens, spokesperson for the Virginia Neighborhood Healthcare Affiliation, mentioned well being facilities are rethinking “how they do enterprise” due to the Medicaid cuts and the elevated administrative challenges confronted when processing their HRSA grants, which have been more difficult to acquire since February. Virginia’s well being clinics deal with about 400,000 folks yearly, Stevens mentioned.
“It is a system that is been in place for 50-plus years, and that is the primary time they’re having points receiving their funds,” he mentioned, noting that clinics now should additionally present an itemized record of how the cash is for use after grants have been accepted.
“Our well being facilities are understaffed, so having any person to should enter that info each two weeks is simply extra time,” Stevens mentioned.
For months, HRSA workers throughout all departments have labored by means of adjustments to their know-how methods and transitioned work to others as staff left their jobs. Staff have continued to course of grants regardless of a February govt order that froze federal funding and a March announcement that HHS would lay off 10,000 employees and shut down complete businesses — together with HRSA.
One former worker mentioned that, at this level, “all we’re doing now could be preserving the lights on.”
Michael Warren, who left the company in June, ran HRSA’s Maternal and Baby Well being Bureau. Warren described the bureau’s staffing cuts as “substantial.” The bureau awarded greater than $628 million in grants between Oct. 1, 2024, and July 22, 2025, to applications that included offering block grants to states and funding house visiting applications, by means of which skilled staffers work with households with younger kids.
Warren, who’s now the chief medical and well being officer for the March of Dimes, mentioned America faces a disaster as one of many “most harmful locations on this planet to present beginning amongst different high-income international locations, and that should not be the case.”
With tears brimming, Warren mentioned his former staff “get up each morning, they work all day, and so they fall asleep each evening serious about what they’ll do for moms, kids, and households.”
Methodology
For this text, KFF Well being Information calculated workforce reductions on the Well being Assets and Providers Administration utilizing public info from the Division of Well being and Human Providers listing posted on-line. We in contrast the quantity and kind of staff listed with HRSA in February to these in early July. Our worker totals exclude folks listed as interns, fellows, scholar trainees, or volunteers. The listing will not be an official rely of HRSA staff, however it gives detailed snapshots of developments to this point this 12 months. Reporters additionally cross-checked the estimates with former staff.
We might like to talk with present and former personnel from the Division of Well being and Human Providers or its element businesses who imagine the general public ought to perceive what’s occurring inside the federal well being forms. Please message KFF Well being Information on Sign at (415) 519-8778 or get in contact right here.
KFF Well being Information is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is without doubt one of the core working applications at KFF — the unbiased supply for well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism.
