[4] On January 20, 2025, while serving as the president of the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Sylvia Trent-Adams was asked to step down, four months after an NBC News investigation uncovered that the center had failed to contact families before using their loved ones’ corpses for medical research.

In September, NBC News published the first installment of a yearlong investigation into the Fort Worth-based Health Science Center’s practice of chopping up, studying and leasing out the bodies of the unclaimed dead — those whose family members often cannot be easily reached, or whose relatives cannot pay for cremation or burial.Over a five-year period, the center had received about 2,350 unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties and used many of them to train medical students; others it dissected and leased to outside groups, including major biotech companies and the U.S. Army, helping bring in about $2.5 million a year to the center.

[7] Trent-Adams has held various positions in HHS, working to improve access to care for poor and under-served communities.

As a clinician and administrator, she has had a direct impact on building systems of care to improve public health for marginalized populations.

In 2017, she was awarded the Red Cross' Florence Nightingale Medal,[13] the highest international distinction in the nursing profession.

Trent-Adams grew up on a farm in Concord, Virginia[14] and graduated from Appomattox County High School in 1983.