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.
Dr. 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 Mr. 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. Dr. Griffin was shocked.
That is “when I saw how the world worked,” she recalled in a podcast interview. Dr. Griffin said she and her husband, a vascular surgeon, decided to take action and “shine light on things.”
Now, Mr. Kennedy is the nation’s health secretary, and Dr. Griffin holds prominent roles that position her to help carry out his vision.
Last September, Mr. 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 has blocked. In December, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a conservative Republican and ally of President Trump, named Dr. Griffin as the state’s surgeon general.
That makes her the top public health physician in Louisiana, which has the worst health outcomes in the nation.
She is an unconventional choice. Dr. Griffin has no background or specialty training in infectious disease or public health. She is aligned with alternative health movements — including Make American Healthy Again, or MAHA — and has hosted some speakers promoting fringe medical views.
Dr. 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, Dr. Griffin’s political rise reflects the gains of Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda at the state 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 Dr. 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 Dr. 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 Mr. 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,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association.
But Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pastor and pediatric cardiologist who serves as chairman of the federal vaccine panel, defended Dr. 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 Dr. 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 accompanying slide presentation said Louisiana would lead through “family, faith, and fearlessness.”
Dr. 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 Dr. 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, Dr. 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 filled 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. Ms. O’Neill was barred in 2019 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 “an epidemic of ADHD, autism, epilepsy and cot death.” In a 2025 podcast, Dr. Griffin called Ms. O’Neill a “sage” teacher who was ostracized for focusing on lifestyle solutions to medical issues. She said she kept Ms. 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.
Dr. Griffin wanted to share research with colleagues that wasn’t “mainstream” science, as she put it, studies she said were from contacts in Europe on early Covid treatments. Dr. 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, Dr. Griffin had questioned the vaccine’s safety after health officials had reported rare adverse reactions. She invoked a public health catastrophe: The drug 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 been sentenced to death for medical experimentation.
“So everyone has to be on notice when making these types of decisions,” Dr. Griffin said, looking at the politicians. The state later dropped plans to require Covid vaccines for students.
Dr. 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.
Dr. 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 Mr. Kennedy. One would have expanded access to ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug popular among vaccine skeptics, though numerous studies have shown it is ineffective in treating Covid, and another would have banned future government health mandates, which Dr. Griffin has called “a slippery slope.” Neither got out of committee. She also testified in support of a ban on gender-transition treatments for minors, which became law.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban took effect, Dr. 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 later found to delay miscarriage treatment and lead to unnecessary C-sections, according to doctors and reproductive rights groups.
Dr. Griffin and her husband struck up a friendship with Tony Spell, the pastor of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, sometimes joining him for Bible study. Pastor Spell refused to shut his evangelical church during the pandemic, leading to criminal charges that were overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Dr. 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 — a passion of Mr. 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 Dr. Griffin. Quoting Ms. O’Neill, the Australian wellness figure, Dr. 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, Dr. Griffin said that faith was not a prerequisite for good health, and that she “may not share every perspective presented” by her speakers.
Dr. Griffin’s appointment is among Governor Landry’s wider efforts to move Louisiana, already a deeply red state, further to the right. He’s supported a crackdown on doctors who mail abortion pills to Louisiana patients and a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration to stop the practice nationwide. The Supreme Court said the pills could still be sent by mail while the F.D.A. case continues in the lower courts.
The governor’s first appointee as surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, another supporter of Mr. Kennedy, blocked his staff from promoting any vaccines amid an outbreak of whooping cough that killed two babies.
Dr. 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 Dr. Troxclair and Dr. Kathleen Willis, an internist who has questioned the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule, as has Mr. Trump.
A surprising presence in the department is Dr. 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. Dr. Griffin has also placed him on a Medicaid advisory committee. Dr. Griffin said in a statement that he was “not involved in formal decision-making.”
Bruce D. 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, Dr. Griffin’s husband joined the governor on a contentious trip to Greenland, which Mr. Trump has periodically threatened to control.
Dr. 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 Mr. 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 upend longstanding 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 general Dr. Scott Rivkees, whose successor tried to roll back vaccine mandates, said rising vaccine skepticism was already contributing to outbreaks of measles and whooping 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 Dr. Griffin has allied herself with some lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature, she testified on three bills this spring that failed to proceed. One would have created new vaccine informed-consent requirements — including banning mothers from agreeing to vaccines for 12 hours after giving birth, when Dr. Griffin said hormones and other factors could impede their thinking.
Another would have significantly limited the government’s ability to require vaccines, testing or masks in a future outbreak, mandates that Dr. Griffin testified infringed on individual rights and were discriminatory. A third 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.
Governor 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 and the Center for Individual Freedom. Most proposals to weaken vaccine laws also failed in other states this year.
Since her appointment, Dr. 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” Dr. Griffin said she planned to highlight as surgeon general.
In speeches before her appointment, Dr. 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.
