Evelyn Griffin had led a life out of the spotlight until she testified at the Louisiana Statehouse five years ago and experienced what she called her \u201cgreat awakening.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state health department wanted to add covid vaccines to the school immunization schedule, a move no state has ever implemented. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then known as a leading vaccine skeptic, had already claimed the covid shot was \u201cthe deadliest vaccine ever made\u201d during a poster board presentation at the legislative hearing.<\/p>\n
Griffin, a longtime OB-GYN, relied on nearly identical images during her own blistering testimony against the proposal. After the hearing, she expected splashy headlines about Kennedy\u2019s assertions, shifting the public debate over covid policies and vaccines. But that did not happen; one news outlet dismissed him as a promulgator of propaganda<\/a>. Griffin was shocked.<\/p>\n That is \u201cwhen I saw how the world worked,\u201d she recalled in a podcast interview. Griffin said she and her husband, a vascular surgeon, decided to take action and \u201cshine light on things.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Kennedy is the nation\u2019s health secretary, and Griffin holds prominent roles that position her to help carry out his vision.<\/p>\n Last September, Kennedy appointed her to ACIP, the advisory panel for federal immunization policy, where she voted to recommend limiting access to covid vaccines and ending universal newborn immunizations for hepatitis B, steps that a federal judge has blocked<\/a>. In December, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a conservative Republican and an ally of President Donald Trump\u2019s, named Griffin as the state\u2019s surgeon general.<\/p>\n That makes her the top public health physician in Louisiana, which has the worst health outcomes<\/a> among states.<\/p>\n She is an unconventional choice. Griffin has no background or specialty training in infectious diseases or public health. She is aligned with alternative health movements \u2014 including Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA \u2014 and has hosted some speakers promoting fringe medical views.<\/p>\n Griffin declined interview requests for this article. \u201cMy vision as Louisiana\u2019s surgeon general is to help shift our healthcare system toward preventing disease, not just managing or treating it,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n Eight months into her tenure, she has yet to make major changes at the health department. She has faced hurdles in her efforts to tighten access to vaccines and limit public health powers, testifying on several bills that legislators rejected.<\/p>\n Still, Griffin\u2019s political rise reflects the gains<\/a> of Kennedy\u2019s vaccine agenda at the state level<\/a>, a vital testing ground for laws aimed at eroding government mandates. State officials have enormous power to set health policy and beat back infectious disease outbreaks. While Griffin\u2019s post is largely a bully pulpit, she could spur real change by advising the governor, state health secretary, and lawmakers.<\/p>\n Some public health and infectious disease experts warned that if Griffin eventually succeeded in curtailing the state\u2019s authority, illnesses and deaths could escalate and Louisiana could be hamstrung in a future pandemic. At one vaccine panel meeting last year, she said it was \u201cunclear\u201d whether vaccines were linked to autism, as Kennedy has suggested. When asked by The New York Times, she declined to say whether she believed any vaccines should be mandated for schoolchildren.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone who has expressed the views she has, who\u2019s now in a public policy position, is very dangerous,\u201d said Georges Benjamin<\/a>, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association.<\/p>\n But Kirk Milhoan<\/a>, a pastor and pediatric cardiologist who serves as chair of the federal vaccine panel, defended Griffin as an \u201cexcellent choice\u201d for surgeon general. \u201cNo one should be afraid of Dr. Evelyn Griffin having the heart\u2019s desire to take care of the population of Louisiana,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n While Griffin is on a learning curve as a political novice, she has signaled big ambitions.<\/p>\n She called for \u201cdramatic transformational change\u201d during a public meeting in January, promising to focus on women\u2019s health, rural health, and the root causes of disease. An accompanying slide presentation<\/a> said Louisiana would lead through \u201cfamily, faith, and fearlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffin, 49, often cites her family background in explaining her trajectory.<\/p>\n She was born Ewelina Bulczynski under Communist rule in Poland in 1976. When she was 5, her family defected to a refugee camp in Austria before immigrating to Canada. She and her two brothers later came to the United States to practice as physicians. She has credited this history with giving her a \u201cdifferent perspective\u201d as a doctor and influencing her skepticism of government mandates.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents escaped Communist Poland so that we could come here for the freedoms, such as medical freedom, that this country has,\u201d she told Louisiana lawmakers in 2022.<\/p>\n Evelyn Griffin, Louisiana\u2019s surgeon general, and her husband, Joseph Griffin, attend a wellness event sponsored by the Northshore Alternative Health Alliance in Mandeville, Louisiana, in June. (Christiana Botic for The New York Times)<\/p>\n She met her husband, Joseph Griffin, while they attended Ross University School of Medicine, then located in Dominica. After residency programs in New Orleans, they settled in Baton Rouge and raised two children.<\/p>\n People who have known Griffin during her 20-year career delivering babies and treating women described her as a kind, caring, and smart physician. \u201cPatients loved her,\u201d said Francis Dauterive, who worked with her.<\/p>\n In the years before the pandemic, Griffin had noticed a rise in chronic health problems among her patients. She began studying how nutrition and lifestyle choices could treat and prevent illness, and pursued online training in functional medicine. She started an Instagram account<\/a> filled with images of jackfruit sloppy Joes and vegan jambalaya, her dog lounging on a yoga mat, and her backyard strawberry plants.<\/p>\n She also learned of Barbara O\u2019Neill, a Christian wellness figure popular on social media. O\u2019Neill was barred in 2019<\/a> from giving medical advice in Australia after claiming that cancer was caused by a fungus and could be treated with baking soda, and that vaccines caused \u201can epidemic of ADHD, autism, epilepsy and cot death.\u201d In a 2025 podcast<\/a>, Griffin called O\u2019Neill a \u201csage\u201d teacher who was ostracized for focusing on lifestyle solutions to medical issues. She said she kept O\u2019Neill\u2019s advice for a healthy life \u2014 including exercise, sunshine, and trust in God \u2014 posted on her fridge.<\/p>\n But it was the pandemic that transformed her career. In speeches and interviews, she said she began to question public health guidance and that of her former employer, Ochsner Health, Louisiana\u2019s largest health system, on masking, vaccines, and mandates.<\/p>\n Griffin wanted to share research with colleagues that wasn\u2019t \u201cmainstream\u201d science, as she put it,<\/a> studies she said were from contacts in Europe on early covid treatments. Griffin was repeatedly rebuffed, she said.<\/p>\n Eventually, she resigned. \u201cI\u2019m going to stick to my principles,\u201d she later recalled thinking. She now works at the Baton Rouge General health system. Ochsner officials declined to comment.<\/p>\n Louisiana had been hit hard by the pandemic. By December 2021, more than 14,000 people had died from covid. That summer, the Delta surge had killed six pregnant women there over two months, and maternal health organizations were urging vaccination.<\/p>\n But in her testimony to lawmakers that December, Griffin had questioned the vaccine\u2019s safety after health officials had reported rare adverse reactions<\/a>. She invoked a public health catastrophe: The drug thalidomide<\/a>, prescribed during pregnancy in Europe (and tested in the United States) in the 1950s, had left thousands of babies with missing or malformed limbs. She also reminded lawmakers of the Nuremberg trials, where Nazi collaborators had been sentenced to death<\/a> for medical experimentation.<\/p>\n \u201cSo everyone has to be on notice when making these types of decisions,\u201d Griffin said, looking at the politicians. The state later dropped plans to require covid vaccines for students.<\/p>\n Griffin and her husband have since embedded themselves in Louisiana\u2019s right-leaning alternative health communities. They have espoused views that, amid the swirl of social-media-fueled wellness trends, pandemic backlash, and widespread dismay over Americans\u2019 poor health, have become ascendant in the second Trump presidency.<\/p>\n Jay Luneau (top center), a Democrat in Louisiana\u2019s Senate, questions Griffin in May about a bill to prohibit businesses and schools from mandating new vaccines or other medical interventions. (Christiana Botic for The New York Times)<\/p>\n Griffin returned to the state Capitol over the next three years to testify for favored causes, including bills supported by Health Freedom Louisiana, a group aligned with Kennedy. One would have expanded access<\/a> to ivermectin<\/a>, an antiparasitic drug popular among vaccine skeptics, though numerous studies have shown it is ineffective in treating covid, and another would have banned<\/a> future government health mandates, which Griffin has called \u201ca slippery slope.\u201d<\/a> Neither got out of committee. She also testified in support of a ban on gender-transition treatments for minors, which became law<\/a>.<\/p>\n After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em> in 2022 and Louisiana\u2019s near-total abortion ban<\/a> took effect, Griffin became an ally of Louisiana Right to Life, the state\u2019s leading anti-abortion group. She recorded videos arguing that the law did not impede pregnancy care. The ban was later found to delay miscarriage treatment<\/a> and lead to unnecessary cesarean sections, according to doctors and reproductive rights groups.<\/p>\n Griffin and her husband struck up a friendship with Tony Spell, the pastor of Life Tabernacle Church<\/a> in Baton Rouge, sometimes joining him for Bible study. Pastor Spell refused to shut his evangelical church during the pandemic, leading to criminal charges<\/a> that were overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Griffin called him \u201can absolute hero.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tBenjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life (center left), speaks to Griffin at the Louisiana Capitol in May.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Christiana Botic for The New York Times)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tTony Spell, the pastor at Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, is friends with Griffin and her husband.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Christiana Botic for The New York Times)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n She has spoken at annual health freedom gatherings on the church\u2019s sprawling grounds and launched her own wellness events there two years ago. Guests have talked about backyard gardening, naturopathic medicine, the benefits of doulas and raw milk \u2014 a passion of Kennedy\u2019s<\/a> \u2014 which recently sickened nearly a dozen Louisiana residents.<\/p>\n One speaker, an OB-GYN, said contraception encouraged abortion. Another, an ophthalmologist, questioned the safety of wireless technology, as has Griffin. Quoting O\u2019Neill, the Australian wellness figure, Griffin warned the crowd to \u201cstay away from sunscreen,\u201d adding there were \u201clots and lots of chemicals\u201d in it.<\/p>\n Spirituality is \u201cthe foundation for health,\u201d she said during the event in 2025, and some of her speakers have presented faith in Jesus as essential to being healthy. At the 2024 gathering, Sean Troxclair, an internist who is now her deputy, said that when he was \u201cinjured\u201d by a vaccine, \u201cI got with Jesus.\u201d He added, \u201cIf you\u2019re not with him, no matter what you do, you\u2019re not going to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n In written comments to the Times, Griffin said that faith was not a prerequisite for good health, and that she \u201cmay not share every perspective presented\u201d by her speakers.<\/p>\n Griffin\u2019s appointment is among Gov. Landry\u2019s wider efforts to move Louisiana, already a deeply red state, further to the right. He has supported a crackdown on doctors<\/a> who mail abortion pills to Louisiana patients and a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration<\/a> to stop the practice nationwide. The U.S. Supreme Court said the pills could still be sent by mail while the FDA case continues in the lower courts.<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s first appointee as surgeon general, Ralph Abraham<\/a>, another supporter of Kennedy\u2019s, blocked his staff from promoting any vaccines amid an outbreak of whooping cough<\/a> that killed two babies.<\/p>\n Griffin has begun her tenure more quietly, seeking ties with the state\u2019s medical community while trying to find her place in a health department hierarchy where the secretary still wields much of the power.<\/p>\n Griffin and her deputy, Sean Troxclair (right), attend a women\u2019s wellness event at the Louisiana Capitol in May. (Christiana Botic for The New York Times)<\/p>\n For her staff, she\u2019s recruited figures from wellness and vaccine-skeptical circles, including Troxclair and Kathleen Willis, an internist who has questioned the safety<\/a> of the childhood vaccine schedule, as has Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n A surprising presence in the department is Griffin\u2019s husband, whom she\u2019s called \u201clike-minded.\u201d Though he is not employed by the agency, he has joined her appointments with state and federal officials and participated in department meetings, sometimes providing feedback or asking questions, according to two people present at the sessions. Griffin has also placed him on a Medicaid advisory subcommittee<\/a>. Griffin said in a statement that he was \u201cnot involved in formal decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n Bruce Greenstein, the state health secretary, introduced the couple during a public meeting in January, saying, \u201cWe basically get two doctors for the price of one.\u201d In May, Griffin\u2019s husband joined the governor on a contentious trip<\/a> to Greenland, which Trump has periodically threatened to control<\/a>.<\/p>\n Griffin\u2019s beliefs represent a shift away from public health policies that prioritize the protection of the wider community in favor of ones that prioritize individual choice. Like Kennedy, she has said this is necessary to restore faith in public health systems battered by the anger over pandemic restrictions.<\/p>\n Such a reframing of the government\u2019s role would upend long-standing public health principles and risk harming society\u2019s most vulnerable, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n \u201cAre we in no way responsible for people who we are going to sit next to on a bus or get into a crowded elevator?\u201d he asked. \u201cDo we have no sense of responsibility to other members of society?\u201d<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s former health secretary and surgeon general, Scott Rivkees,<\/a> whose successor tried to roll back<\/a> vaccine mandates, said rising vaccine skepticism was already contributing to outbreaks of measles<\/a> and whooping cough<\/a>. \u201cThis is something that our country will regret as we start seeing our sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, cousins, pay the price,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n Even though Griffin has allied herself with some lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature, she testified on three bills this year that failed to proceed. One would have created new informed-consent requirements<\/a> for vaccines \u2014 including banning mothers from agreeing to vaccines for 12 hours after giving birth, when Griffin said hormones and other factors could impede their thinking.<\/p>\n Another would have significantly limited<\/a> the government\u2019s ability to require vaccines, testing, or masks in a future outbreak, mandates that Griffin testified infringed on individual rights and were discriminatory. A third bill<\/a>, her own proposal, would have given her office sweeping access to all medical records in the state, which are now protected by medical privacy laws.<\/p>\n Gov. Landry did not publicly push for the measures, a sign that they may not be priorities for his administration. A majority of Louisiana voters support school vaccine mandates, according to polls by Louisiana Families for Vaccines<\/a> and the Center for Individual Freedom<\/a>. Most proposals to weaken vaccine laws also failed in other states<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n Since her appointment, Griffin has traveled the state to meet with residents. In June, she and her husband wandered through a wellness event, sponsored by the Northshore Alternative Health Alliance, in Mandeville. She had been invited to give the keynote address by Abigail Licatino, a member of Health Freedom Louisiana who has said that vaccines cause \u201cmost\u201d autism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Booths featured local farmers, reiki practitioners, functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, spiritual healers, and purveyors of peptides, supplements, and IV treatments. The event represented some of the \u201cholistic approaches\u201d Griffin said she planned to highlight as surgeon general.<\/p>\n In speeches before her appointment, Griffin had offered a far-reaching vision. While conventional medicine would still play an indispensable role, she said, the current health system was failing Americans and would \u201ccollapse.\u201d The health freedom and wellness movements would help show \u201cthe path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times\u2019 Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill, and Kirsten Noyes contributed research for this article.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Evelyn Griffin had led a life out of the spotlight until she testified at the Louisiana Statehouse five years ago and experienced what she called her \u201cgreat awakening.\u201d The state health department wanted to add covid vaccines to the school immunization schedule, a move no state has ever implemented. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then known…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}