Regina Benjamin, MD, who is featured in a National Library of Medicine exhibition, is President Obama’s nominee to serve as US Surgeon General. Benjamin is the first African American woman to become president of the state medical society of Alabama, and has held leadership positions statewide and nationally.

The founder and CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama, which was battered by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she has long provided medical care on the Gulf Coast rebuilding the clinic after each hurricane and continuing to offer medical care to the village’s 2,500 residents.

She is one of the outstanding American women physicians profiled in the National Library of Medicine’s 2003-2005 exhibition, Changing the Face of Medicine.

With support from the American Library Association, Changing the Face of Medicine is traveling the nation through November 2010.

The US Surgeon General serves as America’s chief health officer and also serves on the NLM Board of Regents as an ex officio member.