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As part of a $70 million gift to the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation (the Foundation) has committed up to $25 million in scholarships for high need students and students pursuing primary care.
The $25 million doubles the Foundation’s existing Primary Care Scholarship Endowment. Combined with funding from other partners and donors, the expansion of the endowment will allow the Heritage College to fund scholarships for an additional 100 students each year. These scholarships will focus on recruiting, retaining and rewarding students with high financial need and those pursuing primary care and high-need specialties.
According to estimates by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Ohio needs an additional 1,200 primary care physicians to meet the needs of patients in 2025. However, many medical students avoid primary care in favor of higher-paying specialties.
“Given the sizable gap of primary care physicians in Ohio, it has been a priority for us to work with partners like the Foundation to find ways to encourage students to choose primary care medicine,” said Ken Johnson, D.O., executive dean of the Heritage College and OHIO’s chief medical affairs officer. “Scholarships are one way to help relieve the financial burden and make the path to primary care easier for students.”
The Heritage College is the top producer of primary care physicians in Ohio with about half of graduates consistently matching into a primary care. Yet, students with high financial need can be deterred from pursuing primary care due to the amount of school-related debt they have acquired.
“I think the big difference that scholarships have made for me, is being interested in family medicine. It’s one of the lower paying specialties, one that a lot of people don’t want to go into as much,” said Ty Banks, a fourth-year medical student and scholarship recipient. “So when you are given a scholarship and a gift like I was, it is something that encourages you to continue to pursue your passions.”
Starting next fall, the Foundation’s Primary Care Scholarship Endowment will cover up to 100 percent of annual in-state tuition during the final year of medical school for students who match into residency programs in primary care or other high-need specialties. The scholarship also will reduce the cost of in-state tuition by at least 50 percent for high-need students in the first three years of medical school. The Foundation gift will nearly double the number of Heritage College students receiving scholarships of this significance.
“The Heritage College has a strong track record of producing osteopathic physicians that are from Ohio, that train in Ohio and ultimately practice in Ohio. This is why support for scholarships is so important to attract the best and the brightest to the Heritage College and to ensure the college can continue to recruit and retain high quality medical students who are interested in practicing in primary care and high-needs specialties,” said Terri Donlin Huesman, president and CEO of the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation.
For fourth-year medical student Julia Horter, receiving a scholarship from the Foundation made it easier for her to pursue her dream of practicing family medicine.
“I knew in medical school, I wasn’t going to be able to work, so it was really scary to make that adjustment,” said Horter. “I felt just so thankful that there were folks out there that are willing to support medical education and, specifically, my education without even knowing me.”
The $25 million commitment for scholarships is part of a larger $70 million gift from the Foundation, which supports a 10-year plan for the college focused on minimizing debt for medical school students and expanding translational research.
It also builds on a $105 million major gift the Foundation made to the Heritage College in 2011. At the time, it was the largest gift in Ohio for higher education and was among the top five largest gifts to medical schools in the United States. That gift enabled the Heritage College to expand into a three-campus medical school with locations in Athens, Dublin and Cleveland. The Heritage College is now Ohio’s largest public medical school and a national leader in training primary care physicians.
“The 2011 gift from the Foundation completely transformed the Heritage College. It touched every nook and cranny of our institution. We doubled our class size; we opened two new campuses; our research enterprise took off; and maybe even more important than that, our ability to impact the people of Ohio dramatically increased,” said Johnson. “This new gift really speaks to the partnership we have with the Foundation, their belief in us and, ultimately, our collaborative work to impact the health of the people of Ohio.”
The $70 million gift brings the Foundation’s total support of the Heritage College to more than $193 million, making the Foundation one of the nation’s largest donors to an osteopathic medical school.
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