President Trump has nominated Indiana health commissioner Jerome Adams to become the next surgeon general.
If Adams wins Senate confirmation, he would succeed Vivek Murthy as the nation’s top doctor. Murthy, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, was removed from the post in April.
Adams was appointed to his Indiana post by Vice President Mike Pence when he was governor of Indiana.
Adams was appointed in fall 2014 right before a major outbreak of HIV connected to needle use from opioid abuse in rural Indiana. Pence was criticized for taking too long to set up a needle exchange to help alleviate the crisis.
Adams took on the criticism in an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015.
“Effective needle-exchange programs constitute only part of an array of necessary services that can be scarce in rural communities,” he wrote.
“The law in Indiana has been criticized for requiring that a public health emergency must first be declared before a needle-exchange program can be implemented,” Adams wrote. “Needle-exchange programs, are, however, indubitably a last recourse that reflects a failure to get people to stop using drugs.”
If he is confirmed, Adams would be the second Indiana official to join the Trump administration.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma set up Indiana’s Medicaid expansion program before joining the administration.
