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As the federal government makes major changes to food and vaccine policy, uncertainty swirls in Washington over public health funding to states, and neighboring South Carolina is battling a surging measles outbreak, the board of the Georgia Department of Public Health has decided it doesn’t need to meet this month.
“As there is no official business pending for the Georgia Board of Public Health, no meeting is scheduled at this time,” state Department of Public Health spokesperson Nancy Nydam Shirek told Healthbeat on Friday.
The nine-member board last met in September. It unexpectedly cancelled a November meeting “due to unforeseen scheduling issues,” according to a note on its website.
The date of the next meeting “is to be determined,” Nydam Shirek said.
“This is an agency with a budget pushing more than $800 million,” said Richard Griffiths, former president of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and an open government advocate.
“There’s no reason for them to meet at all? That seems farfetched. For the board to not meet is effectively saying that everything is perfect, and we know that’s not the case, because Georgia ranks the eighth worst in the country for infant mortality.”
When the board does meet, it typically hears from public health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey and State Epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek about disease trends in the state. Public health employees also give updates on topics ranging from newborn screening to food service inspections.
The meetings, held via Zoom, provide board members a chance to ask questions about how programs are working. For example, at the September meeting, Dr. James Curran, the board’s chair, criticized new vaccine policies introduced by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Toomey said at that meeting the agency would consider following other guidelines, such as those from the American Academy of Pediatrics, if the federal government changed its recommendations around routine childhood vaccines.
The federal government did change its recommendations this week.
The board met just four times each in 2024 and 2025. It also met just twice during the first two years of the Covid pandemic, but resumed meeting more regularly in 2023. Georgia’s open meetings law requires state agencies to meet “in accordance with a regular schedule.”
In response to questions from Healthbeat about why it does not meet more frequently, Nydam Shirek said, “The Georgia Department of Public Health regularly issues news releases and posts on social media on topics of interest and public health matters of concern. DPH also maintains a website that provides information about all DPH programs.”
Since the September meeting, flu rates have spiked in Georgia, and health department workers put in hundreds of working hours to contain a measles outbreak at Georgia State University.
Now a measles outbreak in South Carolina has surged to 310 cases since October 2025, and Georgians are worried about spread. In the 2023-24 school year, 88.4% of Georgia students had received two doses of the measles vaccine, which is below the 95% needed for herd immunity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Wouldn’t the board be wanting to know what the Department of Public Health has prepared in case that outbreak crossed into Georgia?” Griffiths said.
And the federal budget, which contributes more than half of Georgia’s public health budget, is bogged down in Washington. Looming cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act health insurance plans could impact 492,000 Georgians by 2034, according to a Georgia Health Initiative analysis.
“It is unfortunate that the board isn’t meeting regularly, especially at a time when public health faces such profound funding and messaging challenges from HHS,” family medicine doctor and GSU professor of public health Harry Heiman told Healthbeat.
“Ensuring transparency and presenting the critical role of public health agencies is more important than ever,” Heiman said, adding that board meetings serve as an opportunity to talk about the good work DPH does, too, “like our effective response and containment of measles outbreaks,” as well as share its plans to address poor health outcomes and health inequities.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
