Adrian Billings, MD, PhD, FAAFP

Associate Dean of Rural Health

Alpine, Texas

United States, North America

Cohort Year:

2019

Bio

Dr. Adrian Billings is Associate Academic Dean of Rural Health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Permian Basin. He is a full spectrum family medicine physician with Preventative Care Health Services (PCHS), a federally qualified health center, practicing in rural Alpine, Marfa and Presidio, Texas along the Texas-Mexico border.

Adrian currently serves as chief medical officer for PCHS, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center-Permian Basin, and is the past chief of staff of Big Bend Regional Medical Center, a critical access hospital, in Alpine, Texas. Additionally, he served as Medical Director for the City of Presidio Emergency Medical Services from 2015-2022. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved – an organization founded by alumni of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) as well as serving in the past on the board of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. He is also the director of the Texas Statewide Family Medicine Preceptorship Program.

From 2015-2022 Adrian served as Co-President of the Presidio-Ojinaga Binational Health Council which brings together US and Mexican healthcare officials together to discuss binational health problems that affect both sides of the United States and Mexico. Adrian also served as a strategic advisor to Dartmouth University and its planning committee for creation of the Center for Advancing Rural Health Equity in 2022.

Adrian was born on the Texas-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas, is married with three boys, and speaks Spanish. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University in 1993, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Pathology in 1998 and a Doctor of Medicine in 2003 from the University of Texas Medical Branch. In 1999, prior to his matriculation into medical school, Adrian completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia where he worked in the Special Pathogens Branch investigating rodent-borne hantavirus infection. Adrian attended family medicine residency at John Peter Smith Hospital in Ft. Worth, Texas, serving his final year as chief resident. He then completed a surgical obstetrics fellowship also at John Peter Smith Hospital in 2007.

In 2019, he completed a Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity Fellowship at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Fellows. In 2020, he was awarded a Visiting Scholarship at the Robert Graham Center of the American Academy of Family Physicians. As a Visiting Scholar he studied the 50 year impact of the National Health Service Corps on the health of the United States.

In 1999, Adrian was awarded a National Health Service Corps Scholarship from the federal government and completed his service obligation in 2011 in rural Alpine, Texas. He has spoken nationally for the National Health Service Corps at Scholar and Loan Repayment conferences and has passionately shared his experience working with underserved populations in a frontier setting. In 2012 Adrian was appointed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to a 3-year term on the National Advisory Council of the National Health Service Corps.

In 2014, he was invited to be and served as a private sector advisor with regards to health disparities for the US delegation to the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2017, Adrian testified as an expert witness before the United States House of Representatives Sub-committee on Health for reauthorization of the $310 million dollar budget for the National Health Service Corps.

Adrian has been recognized with teaching awards from both Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center-Permian Basin and the University of Texas Medical Branch. In 2015, the Texas Academy of Family Physicians honored Adrian with the 2015 Exemplary Teaching Award for his work with precepting medical students. In 2016, he was awarded the Exemplary Teaching Award from the American Academy of Family Physicians. In 2019, the Texas Academy of Family Physicians awarded him the Philanthropist of the year and in 2020 he was awarded the Physician of the Year. In 2022, he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Also, in 2022, the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved recognized Adrian as the Clinician of the Year. In 2017, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Alpine Independent School District.