President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward 40-year-old CNN medical reporter Sanjay Gupta to be the nation's next surgeon general, the cable news network acknowledged Tuesday.

Gupta, who hosts "House Call" on CNN, is an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

During the Clinton administration, he was a White House fellow and special adviser to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Officials at CNN said it kept Gupta from reporting on health care policy and other matters involving the incoming Obama administration once they learned the President-elect was looking at him as a surgeon candidate. 

Gupta would give the White House a young, popular, high-profile doctor as the key ambassador on national health issues. His predecessors, C. Everett Koop and William Satcher were both outspoken in their fight against AIDS and the ills of cigarettes.