The Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression honored Dr. Garrett Adams with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his leadership in the single payer/improved Medicare for All movement. The award was presented on December 7, 2019, at the 22nd Annual Alliance Unity Dinner celebrating the 45th year since the founding of the Alliance.
Dr. Adams was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Wake Forest School of Medicine, where he was recognized as a Distinguished Lecturer.
He completed pediatric residency at Vanderbilt University Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellowship at the University of Colorado.
He has a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health by whom he was recently recognized with the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In 2014 he was the Granger Lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine.
He is retired from the full-time faculty of the University of Louisville School of Medicine where he was Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Medical Director of Communicable Diseases at the Louisville Metro Health Department.
During his forty-year career he attended the health care needs of sick children and their young families. He witnessed deterioration in health care access and health care delivery in the United States and now works for health care reform as a member of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.PNHP.org). He is a founding member of PNHP-Kentucky (www.kyhealthcare.org), a member of the national Board of PNHP, and was national President of PNHP 2010-2012.
He is the founder (2010) and Medical Director of the Beersheba Springs Medical Clinic, Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, a not-for-profit, volunteer clinic in the Cumberland mountains of Tennessee (www.beershebaclinic.org).
In 2011 he testified to the U.S. Senate on “Is Poverty a Death Sentence”, based on his experience in Appalachia.
Congratulations, Dr. Adams, from all of us at Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care!
Thanks to Carrie Irwin for the photos.