President Trump has nominated Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the health commissioner for Indiana and a strong advocate of needle exchanges to avoid the spread of disease, to be the surgeon general of the United States.

Dr. Adams, 42, was first appointed to the Indiana post in October 2014 when Vice President Mike Pence was governor. Shortly after Dr. Adams took office, there was an unusual H.I.V. outbreak in Scott County, a rural Indiana community near the Kentucky border.

Dr. Adams later recalled his meeting on the topic with Mr. Pence, state health officials and doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The governor looked to me and he looked to C.D.C. and said, ‘What do we need to do to respond to this outbreak?’” Dr. Adams said in an interview with The New York Times. “The C.D.C. felt strongly, and I agreed, that providing syringes was the appropriate response, that this is an extraordinary situation that requires extraordinary measures.”

The needle exchange is credited with helping to stop the outbreak, which had spread largely among people injecting the prescription painkiller Opana.