Dr. Nicole Saphier, an East Coast radiologist nominated by President Donald Trump to become the next U.S. surgeon general, was once an Arizona teen mom who forged an unconventional path to becoming a doctor.

Saphier (pronounced like sapphire) is the third person Trump has nominated to be the nation’s top doctor since he began serving his second presidential term. Though she now lives in New Jersey, Saphier was born in Scottsdale, grew up in the Valley, graduated from Arizona State University and completed her medical residency and a radiology fellowship in the Phoenix area.

The United States hasn’t had a surgeon general since Dr. Vivek Murthy left the job on Jan. 20, 2025. The job requires overseeing about 6,000 uniformed officers in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps and presiding as the nation’s top health educator, advising Americans on how to improve health and reduce the risk of illness and injuries.

The next step for Saphier is participation confirmation hearings before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. No hearings had been scheduled as of May 20.

In addition to being an attending radiologist, physician and associate professor of radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, Saphier is director of Breast Imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Monmouth, New Jersey facility and a Fox News medical commentator, an author and podcaster.

She has also promoted the wellness supplement brand DropRx.

Saphier’s books include “Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis” (Broadside Books, 2020) and “Panic Attack: Playing Politics With Science In The Fight Against COVID-19” (HarperCollins, 2021).

In her book, “Love, Mom: Inspiring Stories Celebrating Motherhood” (Fox News Books, 2024), Saphier writes about becoming pregnant at the age of 17 as a teenager growing up in Arizona and deciding to have the baby despite pressure to have an abortion, a decision that has been cited by anti-abortion advocates in praise for Saphier following her nomination.

Contributors to “Love, Mom” include former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; conservative television personality Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is the wife of U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; and Jennifer Hegseth, who is the wife of U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Saphier spearheaded Arizona’s breast density notification law

During her diagnostic radiology residency at Maricopa Medical Center, now known as Valleywise Health Medical Center, Saphier stood out for her professionalism, communication skills and strong academic abilities, according to Dr. Daniel Gridley, who is chair of the radiology department for Valleywise Health and division chair of radiology for District Medical Group.

When Saphier was completing her residency from approximately 2009 through 2013 (and known as Dr. Nicole Berardoni), Gridley was a faculty member with District Medical Group, which allowed him to observe her development firsthand, including her “highly capable” research skills, he wrote in an email.

Gridley, who has acted as a professional reference for Saphier, wrote that he’s confident she would excel as surgeon general and bring “strong communication skills, and a deeply patient-centered perspective to her work.”

Saphier, who did not respond to interview requests, cut her teeth in the public sphere working on a 2014 Arizona bill requiring providers who administer mammogram screening to notify patients with dense breasts, she said during the Feb. 24, 2022, episode of the American College of Radiology’s Taking the Lead podcast. During the podcast, she spoke about the importance of medical professionals providing input in public policy decisions.

“We have a lot of politicians who make on-the-whim decisions about our profession that affect our everyday lives as well as our patients,” she said. So if we aren’t going to stand up for ourselves and our patients, no one is.”

During the podcast, Saphier recalled that she cornered then-Sen. Nancy Barto, the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee chair, at a charity event, persuaded Barto to work on the bill with her. During committee hearings, Saphier testified and provided evidence about the benefits of breast density notification, Barto recalled in an interview.

“She educated us all like crazy on that issue and it was wonderful to get such good policy passed,” Barto said. “A lot of people in her position talk down to lay people and she does not.”

The Arizona bill, signed into law by then-Gov. Jan Brewer led Saphier to continue advocating for breast cancer prevention policy in New York and New Jersey, she said during the podcast.

‘She has no apparent experience running a large organization’

Trump’s first surgeon general nominee in 2025 was Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who faced scrutiny after providing misleading information about her medical credentials, which was first reported by CBS News. The second was Dr. Casey Means, whose nomination stalled following criticism that she lacked the experience for the job. Trump announced he was withdrawing Means’ nomination on April 30, which was the same day he announced Saphier as his next pick.

On the social media platform Truth Social, Trump on April 30 called Saphier a “star physician” and an “incredible communicator who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”

Dr. Richard Carmona, who lives in Arizona and was surgeon general under President George W. Bush, said it’s a positive that Saphier has an active physician’s license, which Means, the prior nominee, was lacking. Carmona was one of the vocal critics of Means’ nomination, which he called “absurd.”

Saphier is a respected radiologist and her resume indicates she’s an excellent physician, Carmona said, but he questioned whether that background would fulfill the surgeon general’s leadership responsibilities. Those responsibilities are to promote, protect and advance the health, safety and security of the United States, and to lead the uniformed public health corps, he said.

“It is not one patient, like an individual breast cancer patient, but a large organization,” Carmona said. “As good as this doctor may be, it’s very difficult to do that transition and automatically have credibility with the people you command.”

Dr. Jerome Adams, who was appointed surgeon general by Trump during his first term, had been critical of Means’ nomination and, like Carmona, said it’s a positive that Saphier has an active medical license. In a May 1 post on X, Adams called Saphier a “solid pick.”

“She has no apparent experience running a large organization,” he wrote. “There will be a steep learning curve, but she’s clearly smart enough to handle it, especially if she leans on her experienced senior officers for support.”

Saphier, who in the American College of Radiology podcast said that she’s a “very opinionated person,” has both praised and criticized the Trump administration’s actions on health. In 2025, she said Trump’s advice for women to “tough it out” instead of taking Tylenol while pregnant was patronizing, and during her own “Wellness Unmasked” podcast on April 16, she called the U.S. risk of losing its measles eradication status “sad” and “embarrassing.”

Vaccination against measles doesn’t just protect individuals, she says during the podcast, it protects communities, especially infants, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

Like Trump, Saphier has been critical of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health policy reform that is credited with reducing the number of uninsured Americans by 20 million people and slowing the growth of U.S. out-of-pocket per-person consumer health care spending.

During an appearance on Fox News in 2020, Saphier said the ACA took away incentives for good behavior choices, “by saying that, however you act, whatever you do, everything’s going to be covered. And so preventable illness is running rampant across the United States.”

Saphier’s “Make America Healthy Again” book opens with a quotation from Reagan-era economist Thomas Sowell: “You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.”

Adams wrote on X that he hopes that if she’s confirmed as surgeon general, Saphier will soften her stance on personal responsibility and its role in healthy outcomes.

“You can’t always make the healthy choice when the environment only offers bad ones,” Adams wrote.

Pregnant at 17, Saphier felt ‘sad, scared and lost’

Saphier’s dad is a lawyer and her mom is a clinical therapist, she writes in “Love, Mom.” Her parents divorced when she was 2 years old.

Saphier found community at a Catholic church near her home while growing up and regularly attended a teen Mass on her own, her book says. Her time outside school was mostly consumed by competitive cheerleading and gymnastics until an injury left her unable to train and “sent me into a downward spiral mentally,” she writes.

Learning she was pregnant in between her junior and senior years of high school was a pivotal moment.

“I don’t know what I expected, but my boyfriend and I broke up, bringing the reality of being a single, pregnant teenager into focus. It was overwhelming,” she writes in the book. “I was scared. I was sad. And I felt lost.”

Saphier decided to have the baby and it came at the cost of some friends, she writes, and she was also “gently asked not to attend the teen Mass and other youth programs at my church. It broke my heart to be cut off from the community that was so important to me.”

Saphier gave birth to her son in April 2000, five weeks before she graduated from high school. In her book, Saphier does not name the Arizona high school she attended.

With her family providing help with child care, Saphier earned a degree in microbiology from Arizona State University in four years. For medical school, she attended the private, for-profit Ross University School of Medicine in the Caribbean, a decision she made after she was wait-listed for MD programs, she writes.

“I had a good GPA, but when it came to the high bar for medical school, I fell short,” she writes. “I could have studied more and done more research activities, but then I wouldn’t have been able to work and provide for my child.”

While Saphier’s family and other supporters were initially taking care of her son in Arizona while she was at medical school, she eventually brought him to Dominica, enrolling him in a school and reworking her schedule with the help of professors. She then did her clinical rotations in Arizona, followed by her radiology residency.

While doing research at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona’s Scottsdale campus, Saphier met her husband, neurosurgeon Dr. Paul Saphier, who was in town for a medical conference. The couple married in 2012. After her residency was complete, Saphier stayed on in Arizona for a women’s imaging fellowship at the Mayo Clinic and when that finished, the couple, who went on to have two sons together, moved to the East Coast, she writes.

Saphier launched a podcast called “Wellness Unmasked” in 2025. The podcast has covered topics such as rising colon cancer rates in young adults and the Pentagon’s recent decision to stop mandating flu shots for U.S. military service members. Saphier often walks a middle ground in her brief episodes, which is what she did on the Pentagon policy change featured on her April 23 podcast.

“The flu vaccine does shorten illness duration and it does prevent doctor’s visits,” she said. “Maybe if they had the vaccine, they were out one to two days. If they don’t have the vaccine, they are out three to five days, maybe more. I don’t know if I’m for or against this move. I approach it with caution.”

Reach health-care reporter Stephanie Innes at stephanie.innes@usatodayco.com or follow her on X: @stephanieinnes or on Bluesky: @stephanieinnes.bsky.social.

Original source: us