World Trade Center Health Program aims to fill vacant jobs after pressure from NY delegation

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has agreed to reverse staffing cuts at the federal health program that supports the needs of 9/11 responders and survivors.

The World Trade Center Health Program has received the green light to fill 37 vacant staff positions, which will boost the number of the program's workers from 83 to its fully authorized level of 120 employees.

The go-ahead is a result of concerns pressed by Long Island and other New York State and New Jersey members of Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services.

"The Program will work as quickly as possible ... to hire for these critical positions," Nancy Tourk, a Washington D.C.-based public health analyst at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, informed the lawmakers, in a note shared with Newsday on Wednesday.

The program serves about 140,000 people dealing with a variety of cancers and diseases tied to their exposure to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But lawmakers have been pressing worries about diminished staffing levels.

That includes concerns raised in a March 6 congressional letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — led by Long Island Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and joined by Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport). New York’s two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer ad Kirsten Gillibrand, similarly have applied pressure.

The crux of the congressional arguments has been that harm has occurred because staffing has dropped to 83 workers. That’s fewer employees than the 93 on hand when President Donald Trump took office for his second White House term in January 2025, which was already below the program’s 120 authorized positions.

The staffing shortage, they argued, came even though program enrollment had grown by roughly 20,000 participants over the past two years, with an additional 10,000 expected in 2026.

"These staffing shortfalls have coincided with widespread delays in treatment authorizations, backlogs in claims processing, disruptions in continuity of care, and reduced oversight of contractors," LaLota and the other lawmakers wrote.

"This is progress," Schumer said in a statement Wednesday to news that 37 positions will be filled, crediting the pressure he said he and Gillibrand applied.

Schumer said he will be "watching like a hawk," and that the department needs "to move fast, fill all vacant positions and end the nonstop chaos that has plagued the World Trade Center Health Program since the start of the Trump Administration." An administration briefing is expected next week on the staffing developments.

Garbarino, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, similarly called this "real progress for the 9/11 community."

"I was proud to join Rep. LaLota in this effort. More staff means better access to care, shorter wait times, and stronger support for those still living with the health impacts of that day," he said.

Ben Chevat, executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, a group that advocates on behalf of the responders and victims, echoed that letting the program finally fill the staff vacancies is progress. But he said there’s more for Kennedy to do.

He said that includes Kennedy letting the program issue millions in research grants "that have been stalled since he took over," and to "allow the program to make decisions on pending petitions on whether to cover autoimmune, cardiac and cognitive conditions among others that have been delayed on his watch."