Dr. Regina Benjamin, an Alabama family physician, speaks Monday following an announcement by President Barack Obama of his intention to nominate her as the surgeon general in the White House Rose Garden in Washington.

Washington ? President Obama announced Monday he would nominate Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family physician who founded a health clinic in a small, shrimp-farming town in Alabama, to be surgeon general.

Benjamin in 1995 became the first black woman and the youngest doctor elected to the board of the American Medical Association. In 2008 she received a MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant for her efforts to treat patients in the Gulf Coast region regardless of their ability to pay.

Benjamin, 52, founded a rural health clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., a Gulf Coast village of about 2,500. Many of the residents lack health insurance, and about a third are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Alphonsine Lyons, director of medical operations at Mostellar Medical Center in Alabama, said many of the patients at Benjamin’s clinic, unable to pay for their treatment, like to show their appreciation by bringing the doctors “delicious lunches” — cakes, smoked fish and shrimp.

Since starting the clinic in 1990, Benjamin has worked to rebuild it three times: in 1998, after it was devastated by Hurricane Georges; in 2005, following Hurricane Katrina; and after an early-morning fire in January, 2006.

During the rebuilding, Benjamin made house calls to patients in her pickup truck, according to news accounts. She mortgaged her house and maxed out her credit cards in order to rebuild the clinic the second time, Obama said in introducing her today at a White House event.

At the Rose Garden ceremony, Obama praised Benjamin for opening the Alabama clinic, “even though she could have left the state to make more money as a specialist or a doctor in a wealthier community.”

Obama, who is working with Democratic leaders in Congress on a major overhaul of U.S. healthcare, said Benjamin “has seen in a very personal way what is broken about our healthcare system,” such as patients who lack insurance, costly diseases that could have been prevented and the shortage of primary care physicians in rural areas.

Benjamin called the nomination “a physician’s dream” and said: “I want to ensure that no one — no one — falls through the cracks as we improve our health care system.” Benjamin holds an M.B.A. in addition to a medical degree.

In a 2006 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she said she had “wanted to figure out how to provide cost-effective medical care to people who can’t afford treatment financed by insurance or the government.”

In 2002 she became president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, making her the first black woman to be president of a state medical society.

If confirmed by the Senate for the four-year term, Benjamin will be America’s leading spokesperson on issues of public health.