Every year since 1950, the ASTHO has presented the Arthur McCormack award to a distinguished North American public health official.

He graduated in 1896 with a degree in medicine and after serving a residency at Paterson Hospital in New Jersey, he returned home to Bowling Green in 1897.

In 1911 the KSBH changed Arthur's title to assistant secretary, which allowed him to be appointed simultaneously as director of the Kentucky program of the Rockefeller Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease.

[6] In November 1913, Arthur was elected secretary of the Kentucky State Board of Health upon the resignation of his father, Joseph McCormack.

The Bureau of Maternal and Child Health, organized in 1922, authorized the KSBH to accept federal funding under the Sheppard–Towner Act.

[11] Recognizing the sparsity of physicians in eastern Kentucky, McCormack encouraged Mary Carson Breckinridge in the establishment of the Frontier Nursing Serviceby issuing her a special state license to practice midwifery and promising her "carte blanche" to carry out her plan.

[14] Recognizing that the effectiveness of public health measures depended upon the full cooperation of the medical profession, McCormack used the Kentucky Medical Journal to keep KMA members informed of advances in public health and pending legislation on topics of interest to the profession.

Arthur McCormack considered the state board of health, with its authority to issue and revoke medical licenses, to be the "legalized executive department" of the KMA.