Ohio University‘s medical school will use a $105 million gift to establish a new campus in Central Ohio with an eye toward boosting the number of primary care doctors in the state.
The gift, which university officials described as the largest ever for an Ohio institution of higher learning, comes from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, a Columbus-based community health advocacy nonprofit.
In recognition of the award, Ohio University’s medical school will be renamed the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM).
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“This is a really remarkable gift, one that will be transformational for both Ohio University and the College of Osteopathic Medicine,” said Dr. Jack A. Brose, dean of OU-COM.
OU hasn’t yet chosen a site for the new Central Ohio campus, or decided whether it’ll partner with a local health system. The campus is slated to take its first incoming class by August 2014, according to a statement.
Once open, it will enroll 50 new students each year, in addition to the 140 who are admitted annually at OU’s Athens campus. By 2019, OU officials hope the combined colleges will be graduating 200 students annually.
Primary care has long been a focus of OU’s medical school, with more than half of its practicing graduates serving as primary care physicians and 60 percent staying in Ohio to practice, according to the statement.
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The often-lamented physician shortage in the U.S. is felt most acutely in primary care, which is typically seen as a less-desirable field for young doctors because it pays the least. A 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the average salary for mid-career family medicine doctors is $185,740. For radiologists, it’s $414,875 and orthopedic surgeons make $436,481, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
On OU’s Athens campus, the gift is earmarked for diabetes research. The college plans to build a new Diabetes/Endocrine Clinical Treatment Research Center on the southeast Ohio campus, which it hopes will attract prominent researchers to Athens.
Appalachian Ohio has the highest incidence of diabetes, obesity and related metabolic diseases in the state, with rates that are much higher than the national average, according to the statement.
