Shortly after the inauguration, the new Administration went on a campaign to sharply reduce the number of federal employees through a wide-scale reduction-in-force (RIF). 

• At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over 20,000 employees were terminated without notice, encouraged to retire as part of the “fork in the road,” or unceremoniously fired by email.

• One of these agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), saw a loss of roughly 10% of its workforce. These layoffs affected integrity of biomedical research and the continuation of life-saving clinical trials.

27 UNIHTED (united for change, stronger as one), a name chosen to honor the NIH of today and the beginning of NIH of tomorrow, was formed by a group of former NIH workers intimately familiar with NIH’s mission. We believe in continuing our important work, learning from our past, and building a better future together.