On November 8, 2022, Dr. Jennifer Plumb was elected to the Utah State Senate to represent District 9. She is serving her first term in the Legislature and was elected to serve in the Senate leadership team as the Minority Assistant Whip. She serves on a variety of legislative committees, including the Senate Health and Human Services Committee; the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee; and the Executive Appropriations Committee. Senator Plumb is a champion for data-driven public policy and has sponsored legislation to address a range of issues, including substance use and prevention; child welfare; and environmental quality.

 

Professionally, Senator Plumb is as a pediatric emergency medicine physician and professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Pediatrics and at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is also the Medical Director of Utah Naloxone, which is an organization she cofounded that focusses on decreasing the impact of the opioid overdose epidemic by equipping individuals and families with naloxone to reverse an opiate overdose.

 

Senator Plumb was born and raised in Salt Lake City where her large, extended family still lives to this day. She attended UCLA for her undergraduate training and attended the University of Utah to obtain her Master’s and MD degrees. Her medical training in pediatrics was completed at Riley Children’s Hospital at Indiana University Health, and her Pediatric Emergency Medicine training was completed at Primary Children’s Hospital.

 

Senator Plumb educates and trains individuals across the state and region on the use of naloxone to save lives from an opioid overdose. This includes physician and medical groups; those within the recovery community; groups working with our unsheltered neighbors; governmental entities; first responders and law enforcement agencies; family groups; and active drug users. She is a member of multiple statewide and nationwide task forces to address this crisis; serves on the FDA pediatric advisory committee; and has been a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Substance Use and Prevention (COSUP). Prior to being elected, Dr. Plumb was involved as an advocate with the passage of multiple pieces of legislation aimed at decreasing Utah’s alarming overdose death and infectious disease transmission rates. She has assisted several other states’ legislators who work on similar legislation. She was honored to be the recipient of the University of Utah School of Medicine 2019 Distinguished Humanitarian Award.

 

On a personal level, Dr. Plumb has experience with the devastation created by adolescent substance use and abuse. She lost her brother to a heroin overdose shortly before beginning medical school. She is very committed to the cause of improving the care provided to youth and the resources provided to families in the realm of substance abuse as well as to the importance of education and prevention efforts. Jen is a single mom to a daughter who is the light of her life. Seeing her thrive and mature into a caring, engaged, compassionate, and thoughtful human is her most treasured gift. Together, they travel, explore the world, support the arts (including Youth Media Arts), go fishing and kayaking, and rescue senior dogs.