Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., is chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions. In January 2020, in order to further increase diversity and transform health professions’ education and health delivery systems, the Board of the Sullivan Alliance voted to become a central program of the Association of Academic Health Centers (AAHC). In 2022, the AAHC merged into the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

He served as chair of the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from 2002-2009 and was co-chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS from 2001-2006. With the exception of his tenure as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989 to 1993, Dr. Sullivan was president of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) -- the only predominantly Black medical school in the U.S. established in the 20^th Century -- for more than two decades.  On July 1, 2002, he retired and was appointed president emeritus. 

Dr. Sullivan became the founding dean and director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College in 1975.  The program became The School of Medicine at Morehouse College in 1978, admitting its first 24 students to a two-year program in the basic medical sciences.  In 1981, the school received provisional accreditation of its four-year curriculum leading to the M.D. degree, became independent from Morehouse College and was re-named Morehouse School of Medicine, with Dr. Sullivan as dean and president.  MSM was fully accredited as a four-year medical school in April 1985. In a study published in theAnnals of Internal Medicine (June 2010) Morehouse School of Medicine was ranked number one in social mission of all U.S. medical schools.Its graduates include former U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University President Wayne J. Riley. 

Dr. Sullivan left MSM in 1989 to accept an appointment by President George H.W. Bush to serve as secretary of HHS.  In this cabinet position, Dr. Sullivan managed the federal agency responsible for the major health, welfare, food and drug safety, medical research and income security programs serving the American people.

Dr. Sullivan is the recipient of more than 70 honorary degrees, including an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Dr. Sullivan is the author of The Morehouse Mystique: Becoming a Doctor at the Nation’s Newest African American Medical School (with Marybeth Gasman, 2012, Johns Hopkins University Press), his autobiography Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine* (with David Chanoff, 2014, University of Georgia Press) and We’ll Fight it Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity; How a coalition of Black health professions schools made health equity a national issue** (with David Chanoff, Johns Hopkins University Press -- publication date: October 11, 2022).

Dr. Sullivan currently serves on the following corporate boards: United Therapeutics and Emergent Biosolutions.   He also serves as co-chair of the Henry Schein Cares Foundation.  He is retired from the boards of General Motors, 3M, Bristol Myers Squibb, CIGNA, Household International (now HBSC), Georgia Pacific, Equifax, Henry Schein, and BioSante Pharmaceuticals.