The Department of Health and Human Services informed congressional appropriators earlier this year that it was moving about $12 million from its Office of Minority Health to help cover the ballooning cost of security for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to people familiar with the matter and a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The cost of security for Kennedy, a high-profile figure in the Trump administration whose father and uncle were assassinated in the 1960s, grew from roughly $10 million in fiscal year 2025 to $17 million in fiscal year 2026, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The secretary’s office has a large pot of discretionary money that it could have tapped for the cost, those people said. HHS cut $12 million from the minority health office, rather than just the $7 million that represented increased security costs, in part because the secretary’s office has been subject to across-the-board budget cuts, those people said.

The Office of Minority Health was created under President Ronald Reagan after a landmark report found that Black infants in the U.S. were more likely than white babies to die and that Black life expectancy was shorter, among other disparities. The office for years has funded research and efforts to close those gaps, which have persisted. Its annual budget has been roughly $74 million.