The American Medical Association has inaugurated Willie Underwood III, MD, MSc, as its 181st president while also announcing the election of Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD, as president-elect, according to news releases shared with Becker’s June 9.
Dr. Underwood, a urologic surgeon based in Buffalo, N.Y., was sworn in during the AMA Annual Meeting, assuming the presidency at what he called a defining moment for American healthcare.
“We are living through a defining moment in American healthcare, one that demands leadership grounded both in clinical experience and in a commitment to equity,” Dr. Underwood said in his inaugural address. “As president, I will focus on bringing physicians together to close the gaps in access, outcomes and opportunity so that every patient, in every community, receives the care they deserve. We must build a system that works, not only for some of us, but for the sum of us.”
Only the second urologist and third Black physician to serve as AMA president, Dr. Underwood brings more than 25 years of urologic surgery experience to the role, including 15 years specializing in robotic urologic oncology. He was first elected to the AMA Board of Trustees in 2019 and served as board chair from 2023 to 2024. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta and SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and holds master’s degrees from SUNY Upstate and the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He was among the first five urologists admitted into the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program.
Stepping into the president-elect role is Dr. Fryhofer, an Atlanta-based internist and adjunct associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine. She has been an AMA member since 1999, was elected to the AMA Board of Trustees in 2018 and served as board chair in 2022–23. She has chaired the AMA’s Gun Violence Task Force, served on the Council on Science and Public Health and represented the AMA as a liaison to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, where she contributed to national vaccine policy on COVID-19, influenza and HPV.
“Patients are at the heart of everything we do as physicians, and there has never been a more important time to advocate for them,” Dr. Fryhofer said. “Medicine is at its best when we put patients first and remain guided by science and evidence.”Dr. Fryhofer previously served as president of the American College of Physicians — becoming the youngest person and only the second woman to hold that role when elected in 2000. She has testified before Congress and the FDA and served as a CNN medical correspondent. She earned her medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine and her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
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