The Alabama woman chosen by President Barack Obama to serve as U.S. Surgeon General has made it a priority to bring affordable health care into her state’s most impoverished areas.

Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family physician, established a rural health clinic in a small Alabama shrimping village along the Gulf Coast in the early 1990s. Although the clinic was later lost in a hurricane, it remains one of Benjamin’s best-known accomplishments, and its success prompted correspondence from professionals in other under-served regions of the country hoping to replicate Benjamin’s work.

Benjamin came to the small village when she was just out of medical school, as  part of a national program that forgave tuition for doctors who would agree to serve in an impoverished area. When her commitment was met, she stayed. Even as she gained national notoriety and higher-profile job offers, she stayed.

Benjamin also served as the first African-American woman president of a state medical association and was one of 25 recipients of a 2008 award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation totaling $500,000.

In the recent past, the post of surgeon general, which falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has mostly focused on whatever immediate health message the president’s administration needed to convey to the public. The duties of the office also indicate that a surgeon general can “provide leadership in promoting special departmental health initiatives.”

It remains to be seen exactly how much influence will be afforded to the office by the Obama administration, but having an individual in the post who has intimate knowledge of doctor drain, the nursing shortage and other basic barriers to access in rural areas can only benefit under-served areas throughout the nation.

Benjamin is poised to be the third woman to serve in as surgeon general, and the first woman from a non-military background.