DHHS cuts Midwest regional office in Chicago
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
The Health and Human Services regional office in Chicago is among the department's recent closures, leaving the Midwest without a local point of contact for heating assistance, child care programs, Meals on Wheels and more.
The big picture: HHS cut half of the department's 10 regional offices, affecting 22 states and five territories, as part of its stated efforts to streamline and centralize operations.
- This includes the regional Head Start office, which serves 28,000 children and low-income families in Illinois.
What they're saying: In a letter to the Sun-Times, former Midwest regional director Michael M. Cabonargi said, "By eliminating regional offices, Trump officials haven't streamlined — they've sabotaged our public health system."
Why it matters: In the alphabet soup of federal health agencies, the department's regional offices not only act as a conduit for federal grants and aid, but also forge relationships between health departments, academic institutions and community-based organizations.
- "Given that rebuilding trust in public health and science starts locally, this could hamper communications and valuable partnership development," said Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who previously worked at HHS for a decade.
Threat level: The HHS regional office doesn't just serve Chicago residents; it is the lone Midwest office serving Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio.
- HHS also moved to shutter regional offices in New York, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco.
- The remaining regional offices are in Philadelphia, Denver, Kansas City, Atlanta and Dallas.
State of play: The department didn't elaborate on criteria for the closures or how the work would be redistributed, but has said it focused on the offices in the highest-cost cities.
- The regional offices have been in need of substantial reform and have demonstrated little value to HHS overall, said David Mansdoerfer, who worked as a senior health official in the first Trump administration.
- "I would doubt the public would see much of an operational impact by moving from 10 offices to five," Mansdoerfer told Axios.
Reality check: The work happening at those offices doesn't just disappear, other current and former HHS staff warned to Axios. Closing five regional offices could strain staff at remaining offices across the country.
- "Just as a practical matter, some of our regions were already very big geographically, and we already had people traveling long distances within their region," said Carole Johnson, who led the Health Resources and Services Administration during the Biden administration.
- "Logistically, where's the efficiency in that?" she added.