Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct that the Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine is not the first osteopathic medical school in Chicago. It was also updated to provide more context on The Chicago School’s record.
The Chicago School’s new medical school is set to start enrolling students in fall 2026, making it the first to open in Chicago in nearly 100 years — just in time, staff hopes, to help address the nationwide physician shortage.
The Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine will aim to integrate mental health and physical health education to bring “whole-person thinking to wellness,” said Michele Nealon, president of the Chicago School.
“We strive to be a leader in redefining what it means to train a physician in the 21st century, blending osteopathic principles with a mental and behavioral health foundation,” Nealon said.
Osteopathic medicine is a distinctive branch of medical practice in the U.S. that focuses on a “whole person” approach to health care, including physical and mental health. Only about 25% of all medical students choose to go to osteopathic school, but it is a growing field.
The school received its preaccreditation approval from the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation early last month, making it an official medical school able to grant doctorates of osteopathic medicine. The Chicago School is part of a private, nonprofit higher education system.
The school is now undergoing the recruitment and admissions process to enroll its inaugural class. The first class will be only 85 students to start, but after the first two cohorts have enrolled, the school’s goal is to graduate up to 170 students each year, according to Nealon.
The medical school is being built in the former Tyson Foods building in the West Loop and is scheduled to open next spring. The 247,000-square-foot space has eight floors of classrooms, laboratories and collaborative study spaces. The Chicago School is spending about $48 million in construction costs, and the expected economic impact over 10 years is projected to be $1 billion, with $4.8 million in taxes, according to Nealon.
Nealon said that addressing the country’s mental health crisis and a physician workforce shortage was at the forefront of the school’s mission, going back to early discussions founders had in 2022.
“The timing of the conversation was quite urgent and strategic. The country is facing a critical physician shortage, and Chicago and Illinois are at the epicenter of that,” Nealon said.
According to the American Hospital Association, the U.S. will be short up to 124,000 doctors by 2033. And according to the Chicago School, Illinoisans will need over 1,000 additional primary care physicians by 2030 to meet increasing demand.
According to Dr. Teresa Hubka, president of the Chicago-based American Osteopathic Association, there are 42 colleges and 67 campuses around the country that offer the degree, and the profession has nearly 200,000 active practitioners.
Hubka said more osteopathic medical schools are needed to address the physician shortage. According to the association’s 2024 statistics, about 57% of all students of osteopathic medicine go into general practice, where they will often be the first point of contact for patients in hospitals and urgent care clinics.
The Chicago School has been at the center of controversy with issues concerning accreditation and students dissatisfied with their degrees.
At the Los Angeles campus of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, forty students there filed a lawsuit in 2012. The students sought more than $30 million in damages from the school claiming they were misled about their education because the school lacked necessary accreditation.
The Chicago School said in a statement that it has improved its educational offerings since the lawsuit and continues to receive recognition from accrediting bodies.
The school’s psychology program has a pass rate of 66% for the Illinois licensure exam with 289 students sitting for the exam, according to the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Board.
“The newly launched Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine continues this tradition of excellence. It recently received preaccreditation status from the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA), affirming its ability to meet the rigorous standards required to train future physicians,” the school said in a statement.
Dr. John Lucas, the new school’s founding dean, said the school hopes to attract more ethnically and racially diverse physicians to the field. Only about 12.2% of all 2024 enrolled students at osteopathic medical school come from underrepresented backgrounds, according to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine’s annual report.
He added that the school will also prioritize its students’ mental health at a time when burnout is “at an all-time high across every specialty.”
“We’re losing a lot of physicians,” he said. “So we need to encourage students to seek care when they need it, and to not have a stigma around looking to get help for things.”