President Donald Trump’s promise to install Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and shake up public health policy across the country has resonated in Florida, where the state has rejected vaccines with unconventional scientific opinion. Experts say state surgeons should learn from their own experiences.
Similar to Kennedy’s relationship with the president-elect, Dr. Joseph Ladapo is championed by and closely aligned with Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a powerful right-wing political leader.
Since Ladapo’s appointment in February 2022, he has been at the center of several controversies. These include advising parents to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak and conducting research to show that coronavirus vaccines pose greater health risks than they actually are. Some include private maneuvers and others urging local governments to remove fluoride from drinking water despite proven dental health benefits. .
His fringe opinions and public guidance, often in direct conflict with those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have led to a similar polarization that has spread numerous conspiracy theories, including a discredited relationship between vaccines and vaccines. This is similar to the opinion of Kennedy, who is a famous figure. Promoted autism, raw milk, and vilified the pharmaceutical industry.
If Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate and allowed to translate some of his more extreme beliefs into federal public health policy, Florida’s experience could soon become the experience for the entire United States, experts say. I’m concerned.
“During the pandemic, a wave of anti-expert, anti-public health sentiment blossomed, fueled by politics, making the response to the pandemic highly politicized in a way never seen before. “It resonated with a lot of people,” said Ladapo’s predecessor, Florida’s Surgeon General Scott, who resigned after his pro-mask and pro-vaccine stances clashed with the governor’s views and was replaced by DeSantis. Dr. Rivkees said.
“With respect to the views expressed by my successors, Dr. Ladapo and RFK Jr., there should be more individual freedom in the United States to believe what they say and less government role in communicating to the people. There are feelings about what we should do to protect ourselves and others.
“This has created a difficult medical and public health situation, as many of the guardrails that keep individuals safe and healthy and protect our communities are threatened and challenged.”
The day after the November election, Mr. DeSantis, whose failed presidential campaign blueprint was essentially “Make America Florida,” nominated Mr. Ladapo to be health secretary. Although the president-elect ultimately endorsed Kennedy, the Washington Post, which reported that Ladapo was on the shortlist, highlighted Trump’s maverick tenure as Florida’s surgeon general. They praise it and suggest that they are trying to replicate it nationwide.
Rivkees said while he has concerns about this approach, he remains optimistic.
“Some of the new messages, such as anti-vaccine, anti-medical, anti-education messages, will ultimately come at a great cost in terms of protecting the public, but they are not the same as those that have been introduced so far in the interest of public health. There is great momentum behind things to ‘help us weather the current storm,’ he said.
“There are hundreds of thousands of health care workers in the United States who are still promoting vaccinations and healthy lifestyles, meeting with families every day to discuss what they need to do to protect themselves. .
“For example, when it comes to public health vaccination campaigns, we continue to ensure that individuals are vaccinated in quieter ways that may not be as overt but don’t necessarily invite political backlash. I will go.”
But Florida statistics suggest it could be an uphill battle if Ladapo’s anti-vaccine message spreads nationwide. David Weldon, another Florida doctor who has questioned the safety of vaccines, was nominated by President Trump to lead the CDC.
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Mr. Weldon shares many opinions with Mr. Ladapo. Ladapo has altered studies to make coronavirus vaccines more harmful to young people and has made frequent false claims about vaccinations in general, including that mRNA coronavirus boosters can alter human DNA. It also includes claims that it can potentially cause cancer.
Florida’s vaccination rate for kindergartners, which had already been declining since 2016, plummeted following Ladapo’s appointment in 2021, to 88.1% from 93.3% last year, according to the CDC. In Broward County, where there was a measles outbreak in February 2024, the vaccination rate at elementary schools was 89.31%, officials said.
“We will start to see localized outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, and public health will need to pivot to deal with these outbreaks that we have never seen before,” Rivkees said. .
Not all experts see the worst-case scenario occurring at the federal health agency, which has similar values and attitudes to Ladapo’s state authorities. Jay Wolfson, a distinguished professor of public health, medicine, and pharmacy at the University of South Florida’s Morsani School of Medicine, said that under the U.S. constitutional system, most health policy decisions are left to the states anyway, and President Kennedy He said some of his “challenging” positions meant little. .
“Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “It is one of the happy events of the federal system that, if the people choose, one brave state can serve as a laboratory; Try novel social and economic experiments without putting the community at risk,” Wolfson said.
“I don’t know if what Florida did is of value to other states or other parts of the country, but we have a lot to learn from it. While some of his ideas are certainly challenging, there are some very interesting and positive public health issues, such as food additives, chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity, and the need to address them. Keep things in mind. They are epidemics.
Wolfson emphasized that DeSantis “relies heavily on Dr. Ladapo, and some of us have expressed concerns about some of his science.”
“But at the national level, Kennedy will not be a unique force,” he said.
“I think Mr. Trump will listen to Mr. Kennedy, but he will balance it out with people who bring good science, good medicine, good policy to[the National Institutes of Health]and smooth out some of the rough edges.” About Kennedy’s policy views.
