Building a healthier Ohio – together

Ohio University and the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation (the Foundation) today announced that the Foundation’s Board of Directors has approved a $70 million gift to the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine to expand scholarships for future physicians and help fund transformational research. The gift commitment comprises $45 million for research and up to $25 million for scholarships, upon raising $25 million in matching funds. This commitment will bring 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.

“Our long-term partnership with the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine is integral to our mission to improve health and quality of life through education, research and service consistent with our osteopathic heritage,” said Terri Donlin Huesman, President and CEO of the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation. “This latest commitment has two primary goals: to substantially increase scholarships for medical students and to strengthen the Heritage College’s research enterprise with a focus on discovery that leads to life-changing impact.”

Over the course of the next decade, support from the Foundation will help provide annual scholarships to 100 additional students, reducing the cost of in-state tuition and fees by at least 50 percent. Scholarship recipients going into primary care or a high-need specialty within Ohio may have up to 100 percent of their tuition and fees covered. This will nearly double the number of Heritage College students receiving scholarships of this significance.

In addition, the Foundation’s gift commitment will support several endowed faculty positions and a new institute focused on aging, bringing together key research assets at Ohio University to form an internationally recognized aging research hub. The gift will also enable the design and implementation of a Data Science Core, aligning expertise in health data management and analysis; fund state-of-the-art equipment at the new Heritage Translational Research Center, which is currently under construction; and expand research opportunities for osteopathic medical students.

“Ultimately, this commitment from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation will ensure that cost is not a barrier for physicians in training, and we’ll be able to move more discovery to clinical applications that make people healthier,” said Ohio University President Lori Stewart Gonzalez. “We are thankful for the Foundation’s confidence in us to deliver on these lofty goals, and we are confident that together we will continue to uplift the health of Ohioans.”

Ken Johnson, D.O., executive dean of the Heritage College and OHIO’s chief medical affairs officer, said this new commitment builds on the Foundation’s first major gift to the Heritage College – $105 million in 2011 that inspired the Heritage College’s “Vision 2020” plan. That historic gift significantly expanded the college into a three-campus medical school with locations in Athens, Dublin and Cleveland – a system that is now Ohio’s largest public medical school and a national leader in training primary care doctors.

“The 2011 gift completely transformed the Heritage College and primary care in the state of Ohio,” Johnson said. “We doubled our enrollment. We opened two new medical campuses. Thanks to the Foundation, we have trained thousands of primary care physicians, many of whom are now serving in rural and underserved communities across Ohio, expanding access to healthcare and improving lives.”

Johnson said the $70 million gift will launch “Vision 2035,” a new 10-year plan for the college focused on minimizing debt for medical school students and expanding translational research.

More than half of the Foundation’s gift will support the University’s research enterprise. OHIO’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine is consistently among the top three osteopathic medical schools for funding received from the National Institutes of Health and was No. 1 in the nation in 2024. Johnson said the establishment of a new institute focused on aging, additional endowments and Data Science Core will position the college to attract additional nationally-recognized researchers and major grant funding, further expanding the impact of the Foundation’s gift.

OHIO’s focus on healthy aging was built with help from the Foundation’s 2011 gift, which included funding to help launch a Diabetes Institute, which conducts groundbreaking diabetes research and delivers clinical care and education in Appalachian Ohio, where the incidence of diabetes is far higher than the national average. The earlier gift also helped fortify the Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute, which focuses on the prevention and treatment of age-related and injury-related musculoskeletal and neurological disease. Age-related molecular research across campus and the Edison Biotechnology Institute will come together to help form a new institute focused on aging processes. This cluster of research excellence will serve as an anchor for the new Heritage Translational Research Center, which is expected to open in late 2026.

Beyond research, the OHF gift will include $25 million to double the OHF Primary Care Scholarship Endowment. Together with funding from other partners and donors, the increase will allow the Heritage College to fund scholarships for 100 more students. These scholarships will focus on prospective students with high financial need and those pursuing primary care like fourth year medical student Julia Horter, who said receiving a Foundation scholarship made it easier for her to pursue her dream of practicing family medicine.

“I think it makes the financial burden overall for medical school less burdensome, which not only impacts the way you’re able to focus on your studies but also feel more excited about your future and not afraid to go into a field that you know pays less than other fields,” said Horter.

Third-year student Ila Lahooti said the cost of medical school is always at the back of her mind, but the Foundation scholarship she received has allowed her to focus more on her studies and worry less about day-to-day expenses.

“I vividly remember the day that I got it,” said Lahooti. “I remember just feeling an overwhelming sense of joy, there was some relief as well to know that some of the financial burden of medical education was off of my shoulders and also a little bit of pride to see that someone else saw me as worthy and invested in my future.”

The Heritage College ranks No. 32 in the nation among medical schools for the most graduates practicing in primary care and No. 29 in the nation for the most graduates practicing in rural areas. More than 90 percent of the Heritage College’s students are from Ohio and many of them return to serve in Ohio communities.

“We have a significant shortage of primary care physicians nationally and certainly in Ohio, and the shortage is exacerbated in rural communities,” Johnson said. “The Heritage College focuses on recruiting students with a passion for primary care who are called to help meet this demand and serve in communities where they can and will make a real difference in everyday lives. Osteopathic physicians have always been focused on improving community health, and our partnership with the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation represents decades of work focused on creating a healthier Ohio.”