Adam Naumann, CEO of Greater Valley Health Center, pictured in his office in Kalispell on March 16, 2026. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon
By Zoë Buhrmaster
For Adam Naumann, his passion for serving rural populations in his capacity as a health care administrator is part of what drew him to the Big Sky State. That, and the access to the outdoors he grew fond of after growing up in northern Utah.
“I’ve always had my eye on Montana,” Naumann said. “My family and I were avid hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen and all that.”
Naumann started in his role as Greater Valley Health Center’s new CEO last week, taking over for Mary Sterhan, who announced her retirement last year to spend more time with family. Naumann has worked as a health care administrator for the past 15 years, most recently in Terre Haute, Indiana. It was in his role there as director of primary care and population health for the past six years that he realized his heart was in rural and underserved populations.
“That’s where it really kind of clicked for me,” Naumann said. “I realized that, you know, health care is important, it’s great for all patient populations, but it’s all the more rewarding when you can focus on those underserved populations and really create access to health care for them, when they wouldn’t have been able to access certain services otherwise.”
Greater Valley is the Flathead Valley’s Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), a community-based nonprofit center that offers primary care to low-income, uninsured populations with sliding fee discounts based on family size and income. In 2021, Greater Valley separated from Flathead County to become a stand-alone center.
Since then, the community health center has acquired Sykes Pharmacy, added school-based services in Kalispell and Evergreen, and purchased the Evergreen Clinic to open Evergreen’s first primary care clinic.
By the time of Sterhan’s departure, the clinic’s budget had grown from $5 million to $26 million, and the staff had more than doubled.
As he takes over the helm of Greater Valley Health Center, Naumann is looking forward to continuing to build on that foundation, he said. He’s also excited to explore different applications for artificial intelligence to help locate social determinants of patients’ health, as an example.
“We’ve been able to use AI to pinpoint more specific means of patient demographics that we weren’t able to identify to this point, so I’m very interested in utilizing some of that to look at the patient population as a whole, and then to narrow down on specific needs,” he said. “And looking at not only high-risk patients, but rising-risk patients. So, trying to use AI to understand and anticipate the future needs of patients through different indicators.”
Drawing from his experience in Indiana, Naumann said he is excited to connect and collaborate with community partners and groups that may not be health care oriented but recognize the strong correlation between a community’s economic health and the “physical health of its citizens.”
“That’s really my first approach is to listen to what the need of the community is,” he said. “And then find ways to collaborate and move forward.”