WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has selected Dr. Regina Benjamin, an Alabama family physician, as the U.S. surgeon general, an administration official said on Monday.

Obama was to announce Benjamin as the top authority on U.S. medical matters at a Rose Garden ceremony at 11:40 a.m. EDT, the official said on condition of anonymity.

A biography of her by the MacArthur Foundation said Benjamin is a "rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States."

It said that in 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 people devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Doina Chiacu)