LITTLE ROCK -- Omar Atiq, MD, a medical oncologist specializing in head and neck cancers and cutaneous malignancies at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), is now president-elect of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest medical specialty organization in the United States.

A professor in the UAMS College of Medicine's Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Atiq is the first Arkansan elected to the position. His election was announced Jan. 14, after he was nominated in the fall by the ACP Governance Committee and endorsed by the ACP Board of Regents. His new title will take effect at the conclusion of the organization's annual business meeting in Chicago on April 30. He will then assume leadership of the organization of internists, which has 161,000 members worldwide, in 2023.

The national recognition is the culmination of more than 30 years of service to the American College of Physicians. Among Atiq's past leadership roles in the organization are chairing its Board of Governors in 2019-2020 and serving on the executive committee of the Board of Regents. He also chaired the ACP's health and public policy committee in 2020, during which time he co-authored a key policy statement on racism and health. He previously served as governor of the Arkansas chapter.

Atiq received his medical degree from the Khyber Medical College, University of Peshawar, Pakistan, and completed his residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital and Foster G. McGaw Hospital of Loyola University in Chicago. He completed his fellowship training in medical oncology and hematology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

He is a past president, speaker of the house and chairman of the board of the Arkansas Medical Society.

He made news in 2021 when he erased the outstanding debts of nearly 200 former patients of the cancer treatment center he founded in Pine Bluff.