Dr. Jerome Adams: From U.S. Surgeon General to Purdue’s Health-Equity Chair

Let me tell you about Dr. Jerome Adams.

There’s an anesthesiologist who became “the nation’s doctor” — the Surgeon General who stood at the podium during a global pandemic and told Americans how to stay alive. Now he’s taking that same fight to a university campus, building the programs that fix health inequity from the inside. His name is Dr. Jerome Adams.

The Work

Dr. Adams is the Executive Director of Health Equity and a Distinguished Professor at Purdue University, where he leads the Center for Community Health Enhancement and Learning (HEAL) and Health Empowerment Initiatives. He’s also still a practicing anesthesiologist at Indiana University School of Medicine — he never left the operating room behind.

Before Purdue, he served as the 20th Surgeon General of the United States, from 2017 to 2021. He held the rank of vice admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. And before Washington, he ran the Indiana State Department of Health as state health commissioner from 2014 to 2017.

His guiding idea, in his own words: people need to know you care before they care what you know. That’s a public-health philosophy, and it’s a life philosophy.

The Roots

Dr. Adams was born in Mechanicsville, Maryland, in 1974, and built his education across three states: the University of Maryland for his bachelor’s degrees, Indiana University School of Medicine for his M.D., and UC Berkeley for his master’s in public health.

Indiana is where he made his name — leading the state’s health response and earning the Indiana Minority Health Coalition’s Trailblazer Award for his work on behalf of communities that are too often left out of the conversation.

Why You Should Know Him

Here’s why Dr. Jerome Adams matters right now: health equity isn’t a slogan, it’s infrastructure — clinics, programs, partnerships, trust. He spent years learning how to build it at the highest level of government, and now he’s teaching a new generation how to do it at Purdue.

From the operating room to the Surgeon General’s office to a campus lab full of students, his mission has never moved an inch: care first, then teach.

Quick facts:

• Executive Director of Health Equity & Distinguished Professor, Purdue University
• 20th U.S. Surgeon General (2017–2021)
• Former Indiana State Health Commissioner
• Practicing anesthesiologist, Indiana University School of Medicine
• University of Maryland · Indiana University (M.D.) · UC Berkeley (M.P.H.)

Photo: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (public domain)