Dr. Joe Thompson is the director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, Surgeon General of Arkansas, and professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where he attended medical school. A Fellow at the American College of Preventive Medicine, he has received the American Lung Association of Arkansas’s Emily Bissell Award for Advocacy, the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health’s Public Health through Public Policy Award, and the Public Policy and Advocacy Award from the Academic Pediatric Association, among numerous other local, state, and national honors. Thompson graduated from Hendrix in 1984, receiving a degree in chemistry.