MedPage Today story.
Of five major HHS agency offices focused on health equity, only one has taken down its website amid President Trump’s executive orders to end federal government diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives.
The FDA’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity website has been taken down, though it remained live as recently as last Thursday.
Websites remain live for the following agencies:
- HHS Office of Minority Health
- CMS Office of Minority Health
- NIH National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
- CDC Office of Health Equity
The website for the Health Resources & Services Administration’s (HRSA) Office of Health Equity has also been taken down.
However, it’s not clear if the executive orders pertain only to DEIA initiatives focused on the federal health workforce, or if also to those agencies’ initiatives to improve health equity in the general population. If it doesn’t pertain to public-facing programs, it’s not clear why FDA and HRSA removed the websites.
Few of the agencies returned a request for comment from MedPage Today. The NIMHD press team declined a request for an interview.
Last week, Trump issued two executive orders on DEIA. One was a rescission of an executive order from President Biden focused on promoting DEIA in the federal workforce. The other called for ending “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
Agencies are supposed to terminate all DEIA-related offices and positions, as well as programs, grants, and contracts, within 60 days, according to the executive order.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) followed up with a memo to agency leaders that was shared with MedPage Today, outlining “steps to close agency DEIA offices.”
Agency directors were given a deadline of 5 p.m. ET last Wednesday to let all their staffers know about the closure, and to have colleagues come clean if they noticed any “coded or imprecise language” that would serve to “disguise” DEIA initiatives.
The memo included a template that agency heads could use to send to their employees, which HHS used in an email to employees shared with MedPage Today. HHS used the template almost verbatim, including the part about coded language, noting there would be “no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
The email also included the template’s line about DEIA initiatives: “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
OPM’s memo also called on agency heads to notify all employees of DEIA offices that they were being placed on paid administrative leave immediately, and that they would have to take down all “outward facing media,” specifically calling out websites and social media.
Finally, by Jan. 31, OPM wants from all agency directors a “written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding the employees who work in a DEI office.”
Even if it’s not clear as to whether the HHS health equity offices will be shuttered, DEIA language was scrubbed from some agency websites. STAT reported that it found 10 examples of pages related to DEIA on FDA’s website that had been removed. This included a page for the equity initiative at the Oncology Center of Excellence, and the Office of Equity and Innovative Development in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Other missing pages also included a draft guidance on clinical trial diversity and a podcast on health equity, STAT reported.
The National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases also scrubbed language on DEI goals from some mission statements, and the NIH removed websites related to sexual and gender minority health, STAT noted.
Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs boasted in a press release on Monday that it placed almost 60 DEIA employees on administrative leave, saving the agency more than $8 million in combined annual salary. It also identified DEIA-related contracts totaling more than $6.1 million that it’s working to cancel.
