Statement on Continuing Problems the World Trade Center Health Program Has Been Experiencing Under Secretary Kennedy

With the 24^th observance of the 9/11 attacks this week, eight months into the new administration, it’s time to call out HHS Secretary Kennedy’s chaotic record managing the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) —firing staff, rehiring staff, firing and rehiring its Administrator, freezing research funds, enforcing a communications ban for the program, and keeping a hiring ban in place.

All of these actions impact the 9/11 responder and survivor community. It needs to stop. Secretary Kennedy must let the World Trade Center Health Program do its job.

When the new administration started on January 21, the WTCHP had 93 staff–well below its authorized head count of 138– along with support staff from the CDC for grants, contracts and human resources.

It was supposed to increase its staff after it had gained 10,000 new members in calendar 2024, with an estimated 10,000 new members joining this year seeking medical monitoring and treatment for 9/11 illnesses, including over 60 different cancers.

Here are the impacts of Secretary Kennedy’s tenure as of this week:

• Staff: Best estimates are that the WTCHP has only 80 staff, since so many took the Trump administration buyout.
• Communications: The communications ban/hiatus has been preventing the program from responding to issues raised by the 9/11 community. Its ability to do surveillance for new emerging conditions is severely restricted. It has prevented the Program’s 9/11 Responder and Survivor Steering committees from meeting.  The Responder Steering Committee includes 9/11 responders and doctors and has met every month since 9/11 to work on the health issues facing the 9/11 community until Secretary Kennedy took over.
• Petition determinations: The program was scheduled in March to make determinations regarding several long-standing petitions to add conditions that have been pending for some time, among them petitions made by all 9/11 health clinic directors to add cardiac conditions and autoimmune conditions to the list of conditions covered by the program, following the requirements of the Zadroga law. But March came and went with no action.
• Research funding: The WTCHP would normally have started in March to award millions of dollars of new research grants for the year, provided for under the Zadroga law, but March came and went with no action.
• Management: Since the Secretary’s announcement in March that the WTC Health Program would be moved from the CDC to his new “Administration for a Healthy America” (AHA), there has been no information on the specifics of the move, let alone specifics on what support the WTC Health Program would have in this new entity.

With the continuing growing numbers of responders and survivors that have 9/11 cancers approaching 50,000, with reports of emerging conditions with unexpected increased incidences among the program population and his communications ban interfering with the program’s response, the Secretary needs to change course and acknowledge—as he did in May—that he has continued to make mistakes with the program.

Secretary Kennedy must allow the World Trade Center Health Program to do its job.

Background

You can read about the impact of the Secretary’s actions on the program here.

You can see Senators Gillibrand and Schumer’s August 5^th letter to Secretary Kennedy on the problems facing the World Trade Center Health Program here.

You can see 911 Health Watch’s August 8^th letter to Secretary Kennedy on the impact of the communications ban here.

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