NEWS
AMA Delegate Report
Joseph B. Selby, MD Delegate and Chair
The Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association House of Delegates was held in Chicago, Illinois, from June 6-11, 2025. Dr. Hoyt Burdick and I were in attendance. A third West Virginia seat was present for the House of Delegates deliberations and was filled by Chance Anderson, a medical student from Marshall University’ s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. Anderson was selected as a medical student representative for Region 5.
Other West Virginians present were Dr. Coy Flowers, past president of the West Virginia State Medical Association, representing ob-gyn, and Dr. Ann Marie Murray from the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, representing her specialty organization, the American Academy of Neurology. Mitchell Nelson, a medical student from West Virginia was also in attendance, representing the medical student section.
Bobby Mukkamala, MD, was inaugurated as president of the AMA for 2025-2026, and Dr. Willie Underwood III was elected to the office of AMA president-elect. Underwood is a urological surgeon from Buffalo, New York.
Dr. Lisa Egbert and Dr. John Armstrong were re-elected to the positions of speaker and vice speaker of the House of Delegates, respectively.
James L. Madara, MD, AMA’ s longest serving CEO, is retiring this July and will be replaced by John Whyte, MD, MPH, who is a nationally renowned public health advocate, physician executive, corporate strategist, and communications expert.
It became clear at this meeting that ensuring a robust public health infrastructure, protecting patients, and continuing to advocate on critical health issues were top priorities.
Issues such as preservation of Medicaid, Medicare physician payment reform, fixing prior authorization, National Institute of Health restructuring, and the reshaping of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices were all part of AMA’ s adopted new policies. There was an emergency resolution calling
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