The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is closing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offices in some health agencies as part of a broader departmental restructuring under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Some news outlets claimed the consolidation will “leave Americans in the dark about urgent health matters.” But an HHS spokesperson, in a statement provided to The Defender, said:
“The FOIA offices throughout the Department were previously siloed and did not communicate with one another. Under Secretary Kennedy’s vision for a more efficient HHS, these offices will be streamlined, and the work will continue.”
Under the reorganization, FOIA offices in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be folded into one HHS-wide office that will handle FOIA requests.
The entire staff of the CDC FOIA office was fired as part of the changes.
In a post on X earlier this week, Kennedy said the moves are necessary and will help fulfill his Make America Healthy Again or MAHA agenda and his efforts to tackle the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S.
This is a difficult moment for all of us at HHS. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Despite spending $1.9 trillion in annual costs, Americans are getting sicker every year. In the past four years…
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) April 1, 2025
According to Politico, the details of the HHS-wide restructuring have not yet been finalized. The Epoch Times quoted an unnamed HHS official, who said existing FOIA requests will continue to be processed.
FOIA is a federal law that allows members of the public and news organizations to request information from government agencies, such as internal documents and emails. According to HHS, the department’s 11 agencies received over 54,000 FOIA requests last year.
Government health agencies previously ‘stonewalled’ FOIA requests
Some mainstream media organizations criticized the restructuring, citing Kennedy’s earlier promises to introduce “radical transparency” at the public health agencies.
Politico said the move “could weaken transparency.” Attorney Michael Rothberg, who focuses on First Amendment issues, told Politico that “the best case scenario is that there’s going to be a major slowdown in the processing of requests.”
But immunologist and biochemist Jessica Rose, Ph.D., said the changes at HHS are “the opposite of that.”
“There are middlemen and ‘managers’ in every establishment, and in my opinion, they need to be removed to achieve/approve efficiency,” Rose said.
In recent years, public health agencies have obstructed COVID-19-related FOIA requests by citizens, media outlets and other organizations — including Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
In 2021, the FDA argued it needed 75 years to fully release redacted versions of all documents related to the agency’s approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the FDA should instead release the “Pfizer documents” in eight months.
Also in 2022, a federal court required the CDC to release data on adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination that the agency collected via its V-safe app. The CDC had previously refused FOIA requests filed by the Informed Consent Action Network to provide the data, resulting in a lawsuit.
Risa Evans, staff attorney at CHD, said CHD’s experience with FOIA requests submitted to HHS agencies “has been mixed.”
“Some of our requests have been responded to in a timely and transparent fashion, as required by the FOIA statute,” Evans said. “However, requests relating to the agencies’ safety-monitoring of COVID-19 shots have generally been met with delays, denials and redactions. As a result, we are litigating FOIA cases against the FDA, CDC and NIH.”
Last year, in response to a CHD FOIA request seeking the agency’s analysis of safety signals in the government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the CDC said it had no records of certain internal email communications associated with the request.
FDA emails CHD obtained in January as part of another FOIA request showed that government health agencies failed to monitor COVID-19 vaccine injury reports in VAERS. However, many key records associated with the FOIA request are still outstanding.
CHD previously accused the NIH of “stonewalling” in a lawsuit involving CHD’s FOIA request for documents related to correspondence between NIH researchers and vaccine-injured people who contacted the agency about injuries after taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
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NIH tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, which would have allowed the agency to avoid providing the records, but later reversed its position.
The documents revealed that NIH researchers — and Dr. Anthony Fauci — were aware of COVID-19 vaccine injury reports in early 2021, soon after the rollout of the vaccines.
The documents also showed that the NIH abruptly stopped responding to vaccine-injured people in early 2022, while FDA officials blew off scheduled meetings with COVID-19 vaccine injury victims.
The lack of transparency about vaccine safety monitoring has devastating consequences, including lost opportunities for real-time, independent analysis of vaccine safety and withholding of critical information necessary for people to make fully informed medical decisions, Evans said.
“They’ve been completely negligent on the subject matter of VAERS,” Rose said. “There are quite a few of us who are really anticipating access to the VSD [Vaccine Safety Datalink] and VAERS data along with a complete causality assessment by the purveyors of this data.”
Evans said she hopes to see HHS agencies “release information about vaccine safety-monitoring without the need for FOIA requests or litigation” as part of the department’s broader reorganization.
As a result of Kennedy’s restructuring of HHS agencies, 10,000 jobs have been cut — although some of these employees will be rehired.
Last month, Kennedy also announced the creation of a CDC sub-agency that will focus on vaccine injuries, while the CDC announced it will study a possible link between vaccines and autism.
Related articles in The Defender- Breaking: Emails Obtained by CHD Reveal Government’s Failure to Monitor COVID Vaccine Injury Reports
- 300 Pages of Emails Leave No Doubt: Fauci, NIH Knew Early on of Injuries, Deaths After COVID Shots
- FDA Blew Off Scheduled Meetings With COVID Vaccine Injury Victims, Emails Show
- CDC Stonewalls Requests for COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring Documents
- CHD Sues NIH Over Failure to Comply With FOIA Request for Correspondence With COVID Vaccine Injury Victims
- CDC Has 4 Days to Release Data on COVID Vaccine Injuries Collected via V-safe App, Court Rules
- Judge Gives FDA 8 Months, Not 75 Years, to Produce Pfizer Safety Data
