CHICAGO - Dr. Ronald Davis, a longtime public health and anti-tobacco advocate who served as president of the American Medical Association, died Thursday. He was 52.

Davis died at his home near East Lansing, Mich., the AMA said. He had pancreatic cancer.

During a speech at the AMA's annual meeting in Chicago in June, Davis urged his fellow doctors to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer, which afflicts 37,000 Americans a year and kills 34,000.

A specialist in preventive medicine, Davis' one-year term as AMA president ended in June.

His leadership was key in the organization's July apology for more than a century of policies that excluded blacks. The AMA didn't have a formal policy barring black doctors, but physicians were required to be members of local groups to participate, and some state and local medical societies wouldn't let blacks join.