Dr. Adams is the inaugural Stanford Medicine Innovation Professor and a Professor in the Departments of Health Policy, of Epidemiology and Population Health, and, by courtesy, of Pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine. She is Associate Chair for Health Equity and Community Engagement in the Department of Health Policy and an Associate Director for Stanford Impact Labs.
At the Stanford Cancer Institute (SCI), Dr. Adams serves as Associate Director for Cancer Health Equity and Community Engagement and as Faculty Director for the Office of Cancer Health Equity (OCHE). The SCI-OCHE partners with internal and external groups to: 1. understand the needs of our catchment area communities; 2. develop bidirectional partnerships to facilitate education, prevention, screening and control; 3. foster research that is responsive to community needs; and 4. translate SCI research into changes at the practice and policy level.
Dr. Adams' research seeks to inform health system and policy level solutions to promote equitable treatment outcomes among older adults with multiple chronic conditions. For example, she and her colleagues were among the first to employ quasi-experimental designs to study the effects of Medicare Part D on racial disparities in access to essential medications among adult cancer survivors. Her current cancer related studies include leveraging machine learning to predict neurotoxicity and employing systems science to inform policy approaches for addressing financial toxicity related to cancer treatment.
At the national level, Dr. Adams serves on the Board of Directors at AcademyHealth, the professional home and leading national organization for health services researchers, policymakers, and healthcare practitioners and stakeholders in the U.S. Before joining Stanford in 2021, Dr. Adams was Associate Director for Health Care Delivery and Policy Research at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and a Professor in the Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. From 2000 to 2008, she was on faculty at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Population Medicine (formerly Ambulatory Care and Prevention). She received her master’s degree in public policy (social policy concentration) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and her PhD in Health Policy (statistics and evaluative sciences track) from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.