Neurosurgeon Monica C. Wehby Elected to AMA Board of Trustees

Monica C. Wehby, M.D., a pediatric neurosurgeon from Portland, Ore., was elected June 21 as a new member of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association (AMA). Dr. Wehby was elected by an assembly of physician leaders from across the country who gathered in Chicago for the annual meeting of the House of Delegates, the AMA’s primary policy-making body.

Dr. Wehby is a recognized leader in organized medicine and has formerly served as president of the Oregon Medical Association and the Medical Society of Metropolitan Portland. She is currently northwest regional director of the board of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

“We’re delighted that the AMA has recognized Dr. Wehby’s tremendous leadership talents, which those of us in neurosurgery have known about for a long time” said Alex  B. Valadka, M.D. chair of the AANS/CNS Washington Committee. “ Along with the election of New Jersey neurosurgical resident Krystal Tomei to the AMA Council on Medical Education, and especially with the inauguration of Peter Carmel as AMA President, Dr. Wehby’s election to the AMA Board of Trustees signals a major strengthening of the bonds between neurosurgery and the AMA.”

Dr. Wehby has helped set the medical profession’s health care agenda since she was a medical student representative in the AMA’s House of Delegates, the nation’s broadest, most inclusive, policy-making assembly of physicians and medical students. Since 2002 she has worked to shape AMA policy as a delegate representing the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

A passionate advocate for medical liability reform, Dr. Wehby was the chief petitioner for Oregon’s Measure 35 campaign in 2004 that sought to introduce proven reforms on the state’s broken legal system.  She later represented physicians on the Oregon Senate’s Commission on Access to Healthcare and the commission’s liability task force.  

Dr. Wehby has been in practice for more than 15 years, and is the director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Emanuel Children’s Hospital in Portland.