The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta has appointed the country’s first African American woman CEO.

Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, a native of Macon, will lead the institution starting next July. Rice is a Harvard-educated obstetrician and gynecologist. In 2011, she was named Dean and Executive Vice President of the medical school.

As the United States faces a shortage of up to 100,000 primary-care doctors BY 2020, Dr. Rice says the institution will continue to address that. “Morehouse School of Medicine was founded to address the physician shortage in Georgia and the nation and to diversify the healthcare workforce so in that we do have a unique mission.”

Dr. Rice says more than 67 percent of the school's graduates will go into medicine in Georgia, or practice in an underserved community in primary care.

Morehouse School of Medicine president John Maupin, Jr. will retire next year.

Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta was founded in 1975 and has an enrollment of around 300. It is separate from Morehouse College, a historically black university located across the street.

Tags: black leaders, african americans, Morehouse School of Medicine, Leah Fleming