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Rosemary Westwood is examining public health in Louisiana forVerite Newsas a part of The New York Times’sLocal Investigations Fellowship
Dr. 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 “great awakening.”
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 “the deadliest vaccine ever made” during a poster board presentation at the legislative hearing
Griffin, a longtime obstetrician, relied on nearly identical images during her own blistering testimony against the proposal. After the hearing, she expected splashy headlines about Kennedy’s 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. Griffin was shocked
That is “when I saw how the world worked,” she recalled in a podcast interview. Griffin said she and her husband, a vascular surgeon, decided to take action and “shine light on things.”
Now, Kennedy is the nation’s health secretary, and Griffin holds prominent roles that position her to help carry out his vision
Last September, Kennedy appointed her to 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 hasblocked. In December, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a conservative Republican and ally of President Trump, named Griffin as the state’s surgeon general.
That makes her the top public health physician in Louisiana, which has theworst healthoutcomes in the nation
She is an unconventional choice. Griffin has no background or specialty training in infectious disease or public health. She is aligned with alternative health movements — including Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA — and has hosted some speakers promoting fringe medical views
Griffin declined interview requests for this article. “My vision as Louisiana’s surgeon general is to help shift our health care system toward preventing disease, not just managing or treating it,” she said in a statement
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
Still, Griffin’s political rise reflectsthe gainsof Kennedy’s vaccine agenda at thestate level, 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’s post is largely a bully pulpit, she could spur real change by advising the governor, state health secretary and lawmakers.
Some public health and infectious disease experts warned that if Griffin eventually succeeded in curtailing the state’s 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 “unclear” 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.
“Someone who has expressed the views she has, who’s now in a public policy position, is very dangerous,” saidDr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association
ButDr. Kirk Milhoan, a pastor and pediatric cardiologist who serves as chairman of the federal vaccine panel, defended Griffin as an “excellent choice” for surgeon general. “No one should be afraid of Dr. Evelyn Griffin having the heart’s desire to take care of the population of Louisiana,” he said in an interview
While Griffin is on a learning curve as a political novice, she has signaled big ambitions
She called for “dramatic transformational change” during a public meeting in January, promising to focus on women’s health, rural health and the root causes of disease. An accompanyingslide presentationsaid Louisiana would lead through “family, faith, and fearlessness.”
Griffin, 49, often cites her family background in explaining her trajectory
She was born Ewelina Bulczynski under Communist rule in Poland in 1976. When she was 5 years old, 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 “different perspective” as a doctor and influencing her skepticism of government mandates.“My parents escaped Communist Poland so that we could come here for the freedoms, such as medical freedom, that this country has,” she told Louisiana lawmakers in 2022.
She met her husband, Joseph Griffin, while they attended Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. After residency programs in New Orleans, they settled in Baton Rouge and raised two children
People who have known Griffin during her 20-year career delivering babies and treating women described her as a kind, caring and smart physician. “Patients loved her,” said Dr. Francis Dauterive, who worked with her
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 anInstagram accountfilled with images of jackfruit sloppy joes and vegan jambalaya, her dog lounging on a yoga mat, and her backyard strawberry plants.
She also learned of Barbara O’Neill, a Christian wellness figure popular on social media. O’Neill wasbarred in 2019from 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 “an epidemic of ADHD, autism, epilepsy and cot death.” In a 2025podcast, Griffin called O’Neill a “sage” teacher who was ostracized for focusing on lifestyle solutions to medical issues. She said she kept O’Neill’s advice for a healthy life — including exercise, sunshine and trust in God — posted on her fridge.
But it was the pandemic that transformed her career. In multiple speeches and interviews, she said she began to question public health guidance and that of her former employer, Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest health system, on masking, vaccines and mandates
Griffin wanted to share research with colleagues that wasn’t “mainstream” science, as sheput it,studies she said were from contacts in Europe on early COVID treatments. Griffin was repeatedly rebuffed, she said
Eventually, she resigned. “I’m going to stick to my principles,” she later recalled thinking. She now works at the Baton Rouge General health system. Ochsner officials declined to comment
Louisiana had been hit hard by the pandemic. By December 2021, more than 14,000 people had died from COVID. Earlier that summer, the Delta surge killed six pregnant women there in two months, and maternal health organizations were urging vaccination
But in her testimony to lawmakers in December, Griffin had questioned the vaccine’s safety after health officials had reported rare adversereactions. She invoked a public health catastrophe: Thedrug thalidomide, 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 beensentenced to deathfor medical experimentation.
“So everyone has to be on notice when making these types of decisions,” Griffin said, looking at the politicians. The state later dropped plans to require COVID vaccines for students
Griffin and her husband have since embedded themselves in Louisiana’s 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’ poor health, have become ascendant in the second Trump presidency
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.Onewould have expanded access toivermectin, an antiparasitic drug popular among vaccine skeptics, though numerous studies have shown it is ineffective in treating COVID, andanotherwould have banned future government health mandates, which Griffin hascalled“a slippery slope.” Neither got out of committee. She also testified in support of a ban on gender-transition treatments for minors, whichbecame law.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and Louisiana’s near-totalabortion bantook effect, Griffin became an ally of Louisiana Right to Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion group. She recorded videos arguing the law did not impede pregnancy care. The ban was laterfoundto delay miscarriage treatment and lead to unnecessary C-sections, according to doctors and reproductive rights groups.
Griffin and her husband struck up a friendship with Tony Spell, thepastorof Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, sometimes joining him for Bible study. Spell refused to shut his evangelical church during the pandemic, leading tocriminalcharges that were overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Griffin called him “an absolute hero.”
She has spoken at annual health freedom gatherings on the church’s 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 — apassionof Kennedy’s — which recently sickened nearly a dozen Louisiana residents
One speaker, an OB-GYN, said contraception encouraged abortion. Another, an ophthalmologist, questioned the safety of wireless technology, as has Griffin. Quoting O’Neill, the Australian wellness figure, Griffin warned the crowd to “stay away from sunscreen,” adding there were “lots and lots of chemicals” in it
Spirituality is “the foundation for health,” 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, Dr. Sean Troxclair, an internist who is now her deputy, said that when he was “injured” by a vaccine, “I got with Jesus.” He added, “if you’re not with him, no matter what you do, you’re not going to get better.”
In written comments to The Times, Griffin said that faith was not a prerequisite for good health, and that she “may not share every perspective presented” by her speakers
Griffin’s appointment is among Gov. Landry’s wider efforts to move Louisiana, already a deeply red state, further to the right. He’s supported acrackdownon doctors who mail abortion pills to Louisiana patients and alawsuitagainst the Food and Drug Administration to stop the practice nationwide. The Supreme Court said the pills could still be sent by mail while the FDA case continues in the lower courts.
The governor’s first appointee as surgeon general,Dr. Ralph Abraham, another supporter of Kennedy, blocked his staff from promoting any vaccines amid anoutbreakof whooping cough that killed two babies
Griffin has begun her tenure more quietly, seeking ties with the state’s medical community while trying to find her place in a health department hierarchy where the secretary still wields much of the power
For her staff, she’s recruited figures from wellness and vaccine-skeptical circles, including Troxclair and Dr. Kathleen Willis, an internist who hasquestionedthe safety of the childhood vaccine schedule, as hasMr. Trump
A surprising presence in the department is Griffin’s husband, whom she’s called “like-minded.” 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 aMedicaid advisory committee. Griffin said in a statement that he was “not involved in formal decision-making.”
Bruce Greenstein, the state health secretary, introduced the couple during a public meeting in January, saying, “We basically get two doctors for the price of one.” In May, Griffin’s husband joined the governor on acontentious tripto Greenland, which Mr. Trump has periodically threatened tocontrol
Griffin’s 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
Such a reframing of the government’s role would upendlongstanding public health principles and risk harming society’s most vulnerable, said Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
“Are we in no way responsible for people who we are going to sit next to on a bus or get into a crowded elevator?” he asked. “Do we have no sense of responsibility to other members of society?”
Florida’s former health secretary and surgeon generalDr. Scott Rivkees,whosesuccessortried to roll back vaccine mandates, said rising vaccine skepticism was already contributing to outbreaks ofmeaslesandwhooping cough. “This is something that our country will regret as we start seeing our sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, cousins, pay the price,” he said in an interview
Even though Griffin has allied herself with some lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature, she testified on three bills this spring that failed to proceed.Onewould have created new vaccine informed-consent requirements — including banning mothers from agreeing to vaccines for 12 hours after giving birth, when Griffin said hormones and other factors could impede their thinking
Anotherwould have significantly limited the government’s ability to require vaccines, testing or masks in a future outbreak, mandates that Griffin testified infringed on individual rights and were discriminatory. Athird bill, 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
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 byLouisiana Families for Vaccinesand theCenter for Individual Freedom. Most proposals to weaken vaccine laws alsofailedin other states this year
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 “most” autism
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 “holistic approaches” Griffin said she planned to highlight as surgeon general
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 “collapse.” The health freedom and wellness movements would help show “the path forward.”
Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill and Kirsten Noyes contributed research to this report
