Health agencies lose 'the backbone folks who can keep things running' to Indian Health deployments
Source: Politico
10/08/2025 06:00 AM EDT
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is transferring dozens of public health corps officers from their posts around the country to work multi-month stints at Indian Health Service centers with severe staffing shortages.
The perennially under-resourced clinics for Native Americans are welcoming the help. But current and former officials warn the 120-day details for about 70 officers will strain the health agencies they are leaving behind while failing to solve the clinics’ staffing woes in the long term.
Public health corps officers, who can by law work during the government shutdown, are struggling to keep federal health agencies running while tens of thousands of their colleagues are furloughed — making it hard to lose key leaders for a four-month stretch. Others are being moved from local health departments already bracing for disease outbreaks in the fall and winter. Some health officials even fear the Indian Health Service assignments, which are significantly longer than usual and target a chronic issue rather than an isolated emergency, are designed to pressure more federal workers to resign their posts.
The Trump administration did not disclose who is being deployed, but internal emails reviewed by POLITICO show top officials stationed at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration were among those transferred, including Dr. Chris Jones, a rear admiral in the public health corps who runs both SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/straining-everything-in-our-system-indian-health-service-transfers-leave-leadership-vacuum-00596519?cid=apn
Their drug-filled, chainsaw-swinging slash and burn is coming back to haunt.
