Who is Joseph Ladapo, the Florida health official who opposes vaccine mandates?

The surgeon general of Florida has vowed to end vaccine mandates in the state, even for children, announcing plans on Wednesday to wipe “all of them, every last one of them” off the books.

Dr Joseph Ladapo, who likened the requirements to slavery during the announcement, is a noted vaccine sceptic.

He gained national attention after he was appointed Florida’s doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic for issuing notices that contradicted guidance from federal health authorities and also for seeming to rely on shaky science.

Earlier this year, he was also one of the top names under consideration by the Trump administration to run the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

As President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr push to change the country’s vaccine and immunisation policies, Ladapo is poised to be given even more national attention, and scrutiny.

Ladapo, who immigrated with his family to the US from Nigeria when he was five, received his medical training and a PhD in health policy from Harvard University.

Along with heading Florida’s health department, he teaches medicine at the University of Florida and conducts research on minimising cardiovascular risk among disadvantaged and low-income groups, according to his official state biography. The Tallahassee Democrat has reported that his total salary, which includes university teaching, is more than $350,000 (£261,000) a year.

When Ladapo’s name was put forward for the high-profile role, Wilton Simpson, then the Florida Senate President, told Politico: “He seems to be very highly qualified, and certainly has got the credentials to make a great surgeon general.”

Earlier this year, the doctor Trump had nominated to head the CDC withdrew his name from consideration. He then endorsed Ladapo, who emerged on a short list of possible directors, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

The position would have given him immense influence on the major changes in vaccinations and disease prevention measures that Kennedy, who shares his vaccine scepticism, is making.

Ultimately the job went to Dr Susan Monarez, who was recently fired. The Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment on a potential Ladapo nomination for the position.

Only six US states have surgeons general, who typcially are charged with advocating for better health and disease prevention, and with educating the public. Ladapo also heads the state’s large and complicated health department.

He assumed the surgeon general role in September 2021, a critical point in the Covid-19 pandemic. A few months earlier the US had begun administering vaccines to millions of Americans.

Though public health officials and leading medical associations had backed the safety of Covid vaccines, and the shots were developed at the instruction of the first Trump administration, some in the country were wary of the jabs. Many Republican political leaders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who appointed Ladapo, opposed mandates for the shots.

Upon taking office, Ladapo challenged mask requirements meant to curb the spread of the virus and loosened rules to make it easier for children to return to school.

Throughout his tenure, he has issued statements on Covid-19 vaccines that seem to contradict guidance from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, and vaccine experts.

In 2022, Ladapo issued a notice warning of an “abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death” for young men who took the vaccine. Multiple public health experts criticised his analysis and the research he used as a basis for this assessment.

“I’m hesitant to even call it a paper; it isn’t published anywhere,” Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco” told the Washington Post at the time. “The idea that [the analysis] … is being used to change policy — it does not have the scientific chops to do that.”

In 2023, POLITICO reported that Ladapo had altered a state-driven study about the vaccines.

Using public records, the outlet found Ladapo’s changes had suggested a higher risks of cardiac death than the study had previously suggested. The alterations suggested a higher health risk for young men than medical experts had previously established.

Before Florida announced it would move to end all vaccine requirements, DeSantis called on the CDC to stop recommending the Covid-19 vaccine for children in March. He also called for ending mandates for vaccines using mRNA technology. Two major Covid-19 shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are mRNA vaccines.

In a statement, Ladapo said revoking the requirements “will strengthen the sovereignty of patients.” He also said that the government did not have the right to tell people what to put in their bodies and that the mandates were akin to slavery.

The health department that Ladapo leads will be able to revoke some of the mandates outright, while others must be repealed by the state legislature.

Already, though, national experts, professional groups and public health officials have decried the move.

“When everyone in a school is vaccinated, it’s harder for diseases to spread, and easier for everyone to keep the fun and learning going,” the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Susan Kressly, said in a statement on Wednesday, warning that the plans could “put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick.”

“When children are sick and miss school, parents also miss work, which not only impacts those families, but also the local economy,” she said.