American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 in 2022. The AMA's stated mission is "to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health." The Association also publishes the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The AMA also publishes a list of Physician Specialty Codes which are the standard method in the U.S. for identifying physician and practice specialties. The American Medical Association is governed by a House of Delegates as well as a board of trustees in addition to executive management. The organization maintains the AMA Code of Medical Ethics, and the containing data on United States Physicians. The Current Procedural Terminology coding system was first published in 1966 and is maintained by the Association. It has also published works such as the Guides to Evaluation of Permanent Impairment and established the American Medical Association Foundation and the American Medical Political Action Committee. The current president is Jesse Ehrenfeld, an anesthesiologist affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin. List of presidents of the American Medical Association In 1846, the organization created a committee dedicated to analyzing the methodology of vital records registration. It urged state governments to adopt measures to register births, marriages and deaths within their populations. In 1847, the American Medical Association was founded in Philadelphia by Nathan Smith Davis as a national professional medical organization. The AMA established the world's first national code for ethical medical practice, the AMA Code of Medical Ethics. The organization educated people about the dangers of patent medicines and called for legislation regulating their production and sale. One resulting legislation was the Drug Importation Act of 1848.