Dorothy Adams, MPA, LEHS

Executive Director

Dorothy Adams began working for the (then) Salt Lake City-County Health Department in August 1987. The next year, she created the department’s household hazardous waste collection program, which in 2023 diverted more than 1.3 million pounds of waste from area landfills and ensured it was reused, recycled, or properly disposed.

Adams was deputy director of SLCoHD from 2014 until becoming executive director in 2024. Before that, she worked as a program manager in water quality and hazardous waste for the department’s environmental health division.

During her 37 years with Salt Lake County Health Department, Adams also led the department’s efforts to become accredited through the Public Health Accreditation Board and helped create Utah’s used tire legislation that prompted the cleanup of millions of abandoned tires statewide. Additionally, she managed the logistics branch of the county’s COVID response to ensure the organization could support the more than 500 additional staff necessary to respond to the pandemic.

Adams holds a degree in resource economics from the University of New Hampshire as well as a Master of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a licensed environmental scientist and has completed several local and national leadership training programs, including the Kresge Foundation’s Emerging Leaders in Public Health program, the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health, and the Intermountain Healthcare Leadership Institute.