SPH Lays Off Ten Employees From Nutrition

The School of Public Health's Nutrition Department is laying off 10 of its 69 employees because of a reduction in grants from the federal government and private foundation, school officials said yesterday.

Several employees in the department said yesterday, however, that the layoffs of support staff are the result of budget reductions throughout the school rather than of a decrease in outside funding.

Shirley W. Thenen, associate professor of Nutrition, said yesterday that the school has made contracts in most departments in an effort to achieve a balanced budget.

But Howard J. Levy, the school's associate dean of finances, yesterday denied that budget constraints have prompted the layoffs, saying that the school has had budget surpluses in all but two of the last 10 years. He added that this year, although "it will probably be close," the deficit, if their is one, will be "insignificant."

Levy attributed the layoffs to the elimination of federal research grants that had funded 80 percent of the budget for several endangered programs. "There have been grant reductions in selected areas of the school, and people working on those grants will be laid off," he added.

Howard H. Hiatt, dean of the school, also blamed the layoffs on reductions in federal and private grants. He cited a shifting emphasis within the field of nutrition as the cause of the grant reduction, explaining that because there is currently a strong interest in how the diet can prevent heart disease and cancer, projects related to that subject are receiving most of the grants.