After a turbulent year for public health, thousands of professionals and students gathered at APHA 2025 to reaffirm their commitment to protecting the nation’s health. The annual meeting, themed “Making the Public’s Health a National Priority,” concluded Wednesday with leaders urging attendees to carry their work forward.

At the Closing General Session, “The Campaign for the Public’s Health: Activating the Movement,” APHA Immediate Past President Deanna Wathington welcomed new President Nandi Marshall.

“My vision for this upcoming year is to lift APHA up, encourage members and remind Americans that wellness is our fundamental right,” Marhsall said. 

Marshall, associate dean for academic affairs at Georgia Southern University’s Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, is APHA’s youngest president and its first legacy leader. Her father, Adewale Troutman served as president in 2013.

The coalition at APHA is filled with courage, compassion and purpose and has the ability to meet this moment in public health, Marhsall said.

Tennessee legislator Justin Jones, a vocal advocate for gun control, was Wednesday’s keynote speaker. Now is not the time to be collaborators with public health opponents, he said. Now is the time to be aggravators. 

“We are a people who will endure,” Jones said. “We are a people who will be unbowed.”

Abby Tighe, a founding member of the National Public Health Coalition and former adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that as mission-driven work becomes increasingly difficult to carry out at the federal level, advocacy and outreach at the local level have become more crucial than ever.

“If we can’t do the mission critical work at CDC, then we need to do the work as advocates to make sure the public and the policymakers know how these cuts at the federal level are going to trickle down into all of these communities and constituents,” she said.

The real impact in public health isn’t coming from Washington, D.C., but from the work practitioners carry back to their communities after meetings like this one, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA.

The challenges facing public health transcend the traditional boundaries between public health and health care providers.

“They’re not making a distinction when they have an assault on our health care system altogether,” he said. “And so we have to also treat it that way as well in terms of having alliances.” 

Photos: Nandi Marshall; Justin Jones. Photos courtesy EZ Event Photography.