Blog | 10/17/2025
Sharp Strategy Spotlight: October 17, 2025
Strategic perspectives on the trends, policies, and ideas shaping healthcare.
NOTE: All words/analysis are those from the source noted, opinions are those of the original authors and not reflective of Health Advances in general nor any individual. All sources are non-confidential and in the public domain (but some may be behind paywalls).
This issue reflects news as of 11 AM on October 16, 2025. The details and broad themes may have changed.
KEY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEWS
Federal employees in mental health and disease control were among targets in weekend firings
- Hundreds of federal employees working on mental health services, disease outbreaks and disaster preparedness were among those hit by the Trump administration’s mass firings over the weekend, current and laid-off workers said Monday, as the administration aimed to pressure Democratic lawmakers to give in and end the nearly two-week-long government shutdown.
- Among the HHS agencies facing staff cuts were the CDC, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, or ASPR, according to current and laid-off employees who spoke with The Associated Press.
- Of more than 1,300 CDC employees who received reduction-in-force notices Friday, about 700 later received emails revoking their terminations, the union said.
- https://apnews.com/article/trump-health-hhs-layoffs-rif-firings-cdc-813cb7d6df9e3f43ea929b09d103ec05
CDC team running top survey on health and nutrition is laid off
- The CDC division within the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) that directs the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) — a bellwether of the country’s health — lost all its planners in last weekend’s firings. Unlike the 600 out of 1,300 employees eliminated across disciplines but reinstated within 24 hours, the people in the branch that plans and disseminates the research informing public health policies from food to oral health to environmental exposures got no reprieve.
- https://www.statnews.com/2025/10/14/cdc-behind-top-nutrition-survey-nhanes-laid-off/ (subscription required for full text)
Trump Administration Decimates Birth Control Office In Layoffs
- The Trump administration has targeted a federal office that oversees a $300 million family planning program for layoffs, raising fears that it is effectively ending an initiative that provides contraception for millions of low-income women, according to three people with knowledge of the events.
- The decimation of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs — part of a larger effort by President Trump to fire federal employees during the government shutdown — threatens a program that has existed for over 50 years and also offers testing for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, as well as basic infertility care.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-birth-control-layoffs.html (subscription required for full text)
CDC cuts put injury tracking and prevention in limbo
- The job of tracking the ravages of the opioid crisis may come down to a bare-bones team of about 150 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers whose overdose division survived a mass firing that took out much of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control last week.
- Why it matters: The injury center is a microcosm of the fractured landscape at the CDC, which has lost about a quarter of its employees this year through successive Trump administration force reductions.
- https://www.axios.com/2025/10/15/cdc-layoffs-hamper-injury-prevention (subscription required for full text)
Judge pauses shutdown layoffs at more than 30 federal agencies [N.B.: later lifted by Supreme Court]
- With the federal government shutdown now 2 weeks old and counting, a federal judge [Susan Illston] in San Francisco temporarily halted the latest wave of layoffs by the Trump administration.
- The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which together represent more than 800,000 federal workers.
- The latest RIFs target the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the Department of Education; the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy; as well as parts of the Internal Revenue Service, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among other agencies.
- The Trump administration appealed the ruling, eventually asking the Supreme Court to weigh in.
- In a decision issued on its shadow docket, the Supreme Court lifted Illston's order, allowing the Trump administration to resume layoffs while the lower courts consider whether the RIFs being carried out by agencies are lawful.
- https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5574111/government-shutdown-federal-employees-congress-rif
Trump Rattles Vaccine Experts Over Aluminum
- Federal health officials are examining the feasibility of taking aluminum salts out of vaccines, a prospect that vaccine experts said would wipe out about half of the nation’s supply of childhood inoculations and affect shots that protect against whooping cough, polio and deadly flu.
- The review at the Food and Drug Administration began after President Trump listed aluminum in vaccines as harmful during a press briefing about the unproven link between Tylenol and autism.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/health/vaccines-aluminum-trump.html (subscription required for full text)
KEY BIOPHARMA NEWS
AstraZeneca strikes drug pricing deal with the White House, the second pharma to do so
- British pharma AstraZeneca has reached a drug pricing deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to similar discounts across its portfolio to what Pfizer signed onto last week.
- Under the deal unveiled Friday evening at the White House, AstraZeneca will offer additional supplemental rebates to state Medicaid programs so that the prices of those drugs will reflect the best prices paid in other developed countries.
- https://endpoints.news/astrazeneca-strikes-pricing-deal-with-trump/ (subscription required for full text)
KEY HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (HIT) NEWS
Medicare backs off plan to pause doctor payments amid shutdown
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said late Wednesday that it was not pausing all Medicare payments to doctors, after a statement earlier in the day stated it would.
- CMS will only pause claims tied to programs that expired, such as telehealth, rural care
- https://www.statnews.com/2025/10/15/cms-pauses-medicare-payments-to-doctors-government-shutdown/ (subscription required for full text)
KEY ACRONYMS
- AFGE = American Federation of Government Employees
- AFSCME = American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
- ASPR = Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response
- CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- CMS = Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
- FDA = Food and Drug Administration
- HHS = Department of Health and Human Services
- RIF = Reduction in Force
- MFN = most favored nation
- NCHS = National Center for Health Statistics
- NHANES = National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
- NIH = National Institutes of Health
- SAMHSA = Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration