A new school in an old tradition.
NCH College of Osteopathic Medicine is a proposed institution in Naples, Florida, seeking accreditation to train physicians in the osteopathic tradition. We believe the body is a single, integrated whole — and we teach our students to see it that way.
To form physicians of the whole person.
We exist to educate osteopathic physicians who are clinically excellent, ethically grounded, and committed to the communities they serve. Our graduates will enter residency training prepared not only to diagnose and treat disease, but to understand the human being behind every chart.
The osteopathic philosophy — that structure and function are reciprocally interrelated, that the body is a unit, and that rational treatment proceeds from these principles — is not a supplement to our curriculum. It is its foundation.
Naples, Florida — a community of 350,000 residents with a patient population that mirrors the demographic complexity of modern American medicine.
A planned 22-acre campus between the Gulf of Mexico and the Everglades, designed around the principles of healing architecture.
Proposed clinical partnerships with NCH Healthcare System and community practices across Southwest Florida.
Currently seeking accreditation through the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA).
A physician for every community.
Southwest Florida is one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States — and one of the most medically underserved. By 2035, Collier County alone is projected to need four hundred additional primary care physicians.
NCH COM exists to meet that need. We will recruit students from Florida and from rural and underserved communities nationwide. We will train them in the osteopathic tradition, with particular emphasis on primary care, geriatrics, and community medicine. And we will send them home — or to the next community that needs them.
Leadership in the osteopathic tradition.
The ideal Dean of NCH College of Osteopathic Medicine is both physician and educator — a practicing DO whose career bridges patient care, academic medicine, and institutional leadership. They carry deep respect for A.T. Still's original vision: that the body is an integrated whole, and that the physician's role is to understand and support its inherent capacity for healing.
Clinically, they have spent years in direct patient care — ideally in primary care, rural health, or another discipline that keeps them close to the communities osteopathic medicine was founded to serve. They understand the realities of modern practice, from health-system economics to the social determinants that shape their patients' lives. They are board-certified, published, and recognized by peers, yet their credentials matter less than the humility with which they wear them.
As a teacher and mentor, they have guided learners at every level — from first-year students palpating their first somatic dysfunction to residents preparing for independent practice. They believe that excellence in osteopathic medicine is built not on lectures alone, but on patient bedsides, OMT labs, and the quiet moments when a student begins to think like a physician.
As an administrator, they are collaborative, transparent, and decisive. They understand accreditation, curricular design, and faculty development — but they lead with a clear sense of mission rather than bureaucracy. They recruit faculty who share their commitment to the whole patient, and they create a culture where innovation in medical education is encouraged and measured.
Above all, they embody the osteopathic ethos in their daily conduct: they listen before they speak, they serve before they lead, and they never lose sight of the human being at the center of every decision.
The Founding Dean.
The Founding Dean of NCH College of Osteopathic Medicine is the architect of an institution still being drawn — a physician, educator, and steward charged with translating a century-old tradition into a curriculum, a campus, and a community.
Carrying forward A.T. Still's conviction that the body is a single, integrated whole, the Founding Dean shapes the academic culture of NCH COM — recruiting faculty, building clinical partnerships across Southwest Florida, and forming the first generation of physicians to wear this institution's name.
"An osteopath is only a human engineer, who should understand all the laws governing his engine and thereby master disease."