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Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots

A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.

Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop.
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This story was produced in partnership with KFF Health News.

NPR has confirmed the policy was discussed at this meeting, and at two other meetings held within the department's Office of Public Health, on Oct. 3 and Nov. 21, through interviews with four employees at the Department of Health, which employs more than 6,500 people and is the state's largest agency.

According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.

Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department's work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.

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Policy change follows new governor's election

Until becoming Louisiana governor in early 2024, Republican Jeff Landry served as the state's attorney general for eight years. During the pandemic, he criticized the state's COVID response and filed lawsuits over federal and state vaccine mandates.

On Dec. 6, 2021, Attorney General Landry spoke at a state committee hearing against adding COVID to the childhood immunization schedule. At his side was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who presented false claims about COVID vaccines.

This year the Republican-controlled legislature passed five bills — all signed by Gov. Landry — and two resolutions aimed at loosening vaccine requirements, limiting the power of public health authorities and sowing doubt about vaccine safety.

Attorney General Jeff Landry speaks about medicines being donated by drug companies during the coronavirus pandemic in Baton Rouge on April 6, 2020. in Baton Rouge, La. After Landry became governor in 2024, his appointees at the Louisiana Department of Health oversaw a policy shift that forbid staff from promoting vaccines for COVID, flu and mpox.

Gov. Landry also appointed Dr. Ralph Abraham, a family medicine doctor, to be the state's surgeon general. That position co-leads the Department of Health, and is tasked with crafting health policy that is then carried out by the departmental co-leader, the secretary.

Dr. Wyche Coleman, an ophthalmologist, was named deputy surgeon general.

At a Sept. 26, 2024 legislative meeting on the state's handling of the COVID pandemic, Abraham and Coleman repeated misinformation about COVID vaccine safety and the debunked link between vaccines and autism.