With Donald Trump taking office for a second term, there is one facet of American society that stands to be upended in a major way. And it could impact all of us.

The 2024 campaign is the first since the end of the COVID-19 emergency. And important figures who turned from mainstream to maverick as a result may play crucial roles in an effort to transform the medical establishment.

One key player is Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who spoke with me about what he’d like to do in the next Trump administration.

“I actually would like to be secretary of HHS,” he said. “And the reason I would like to do that is because I’m in it for impact. Like, if I can’t have impact, I’m not in it.”

Ladapo’s desire to have impact became clear during the pandemic. When COVID hit, he was a professor of medicine at the University of California, researching heart health. He became one of the mainstream figures to break away and speak out early against what they considered the disastrous shutdowns, CDC mandates, and government misinformation.

“The pandemic was really just something remarkable,” he said, “because somehow you got people and, you know … almost every single person walking on this earth has good intentions. And somehow you got so many people with good intentions to engage and really enroll in things that are obviously very clearly immoral and badly intended. And so that’s a remarkable thing.”

Born in Nigeria, Ladapo earned his medical degree and a Ph.D. in health policy at Harvard University.

In September 2021, he was tapped by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to be the Sunshine State’s surgeon general.

“I felt very clearly that my objective, my role, was to reset the tone. And the tone was ‘fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.’ You know, ‘Must do this, must do this, must do this. Everyone get in line, everyone get in line, everyone get in line,'” he said. “And I just wanted to rip that all apart and remind people that people and individuals are what matter, and their will matters and their preferences matter and good health matters.”

That includes, he says, information about the COVID vaccines.

In January, he said the FDA had failed to examine unique risks, and he concluded that “these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.”

Ladapo isn’t the only esteemed medical figure who bucked the establishment over COVID and is now allied with Trump.

Others who’ve been speaking with Trump officials about taking a role in the new administration include Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya. He was among the first to formally organize opposition to the shutdowns. The Great Barrington Declaration is a petition signed by more than 63,000 scientists and medical practitioners.

Also, Aseem Malhotra, a top British cardiologist. He became an activist on COVID vaccine safety after he says his father, also a cardiologist, died from the vaccine.

Another person who stands to factor in, in a big way, is attorney and children’s health advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He joined the Trump campaign with a “Make America Healthy Again” mantra. He may take on a new role to oversee an end to corruption in public health agencies.

Asked what he’d want to accomplish in the Trump administration, Ladapo said good leadership is essential.

“People sort of often think of it as being an external thing, but it’s actually absolutely, primarily an internal thing. So when people take really good care of themselves physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, guess what, you have someone who can really be a good leader,” he said. “And oftentimes these organizations have a culture. And it’s not like a culture with a little ‘c’; it’s a culture with a capital ‘C.’ And it’s not personal, but those people can’t be part of the organization if the organization’s going to change.”

Ladapo says his clinical experience treating patients would also help separate him from others, such as the current leader at HHS, Xavier Becerra. Becerra, a lawyer, is the first Hispanic to be Health and Human Services secretary. Before that, he was a Democratic party official in Congress.

“Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” airs at 10 a.m. Sunday, WJLA (Channel 7) and WBFF (Channel 45).