ON A LAWN at California’s oldest university, leaders from education, health care and politics gathered Thursday morning to announce a project they said could reshape the future of medical care in the Central Valley: a new medical school in Stockton.
University of the Pacific announced plans to open a School of Medicine on its Stockton campus, establishing what the university says would be the first M.D.-granting medical school in the Central Valley from south of Sacramento to north of Los Angeles.
The school is expected to open in fall 2030 and would be built around a new 100,000-square-foot medical education facility on Pacific’s Stockton campus. University officials said the project is designed to address one of the region’s most persistent inequities: a shortage of physicians in a part of California where access to care has long lagged behind the state’s wealthier coastal regions.
Pacific is launching a $150 million campaign to help fund the school, including construction, faculty recruitment, academic resources and other startup costs.
“This School of Medicine represents more than just an academic program,” said Scott Biedermann, Pacific’s vice president for development and alumni relations. “This is a workforce development issue, this is an economic development issue, and this is a health care disparity issue that we’re hoping to resolve within the Central Valley.”
Speakers representing the university and local health care, including Pacific President Christopher Callahan and Dignity Health St. Joseph Medical Center CEO David Ziolkowski, as well as public officials such as Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, and state Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, D-Tracy, gathered on Knoles Lawn at Pacific’s Stockton campus Thursday morning for the announcement.
University officials said the medical school will partner with Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton, where third- and fourth-year medical students are expected to complete clinical rotations.
That partnership, officials say, is central to the school’s purpose: training doctors in the same community where Pacific hopes more of them will stay.
Region lags in health services
The Central Valley’s physician shortage is well documented. A 2025 California Health Care Foundation report found that the San Joaquin Valley was one of four California regions that did not meet the recommended supply of primary care physicians. The region also fell below the recommended supply of specialists.
Another 2025 report from Healthforce Center at UCSF found that six of the San Joaquin Valley’s eight counties — including San Joaquin County — are federally designated Health Professional Shortage Areas for primary care, dental and mental health providers.
All eight counties in the region are considered medically underserved areas, meaning residents lack sufficient access to basic primary care services.
Statewide, California is projected to need 10,500 additional primary care providers by 2030 to meet demand, according to Let’s Get Healthy California, a state health initiative.
For Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi, the announcement was not only about medical education, but what the school could mean for a city often defined from the outside by its challenges.
“People no longer have to go up to Sacramento or go to the Bay Area. We’ll be right here.”
Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi
“The key word today was transformational,” Fugazi said. “We’re not talking just about education, we’re talking about workforce development, access to health care, and economic transformation for the city of Stockton.”
Fugazi, who attended the announcement, said Stockton residents too often have to leave the city or region to access major educational and health care opportunities.
“People no longer have to go up to Sacramento or go to the Bay Area,” Fugazi said. “We’ll be right here.”
The project also carries symbolic weight in a city where many families have historically been excluded from pathways into medicine. Fugazi said the school could allow children in Stockton to grow up seeing medical school as something within reach.
“Our kids who are in kindergarten will be able to grow up seeing people that look like them up in med school,” Fugazi said. “And be able to say: ‘I’m going to be there next, and I’m going to stay in my community, and give back to those that helped me get where I am today.’”
Joining a long list of health education programs
Pacific’s planned medical school would add to the university’s existing health care programs, including the Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and School of Health Sciences. Founded in 1851, Pacific has nearly 7,000 students across its Stockton, Sacramento and San Francisco campuses.
Pacific’s ties to medical education date back to the 19th century. Stanford Medicine traces its origins to a San Francisco medical department associated with University of the Pacific, which later became Cooper Medical College and was adopted as Stanford’s School of Medicine in 1908.
Now, university leaders are trying to return medical education to Pacific under a different regional mission.
Biedermann said the $150 million campaign will require support from private donors, the university, and government partners at the federal, state and local levels. He said Pacific will also need donors from outside the Central Valley to see the region’s physician shortage as a statewide issue.
“We know in order to be successful in raising those funds, that we’re going to have to get investors from outside this region to support it,” Biedermann said. “We need a Mackenzie Scott, we need some tech folks to step up and say, I want to help support to make these changes in the Central Valley.”
The university has already secured more than $25 million in donations, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, including gifts from Pacific alums Tony and Virginia Chan and the Stockton-based Cortopassi Family Foundation.
Earlier this year, Stockton officials also moved to support Pacific’s request for federal funding. Fugazi said she had known about the medical school project since last year but was asked not to speak publicly about it before Thursday’s announcement.
She said the Stockton City Council held a special meeting so the city could sign a letter of support when Harder’s office needed documentation for funding related to the project.
“We did a special meeting, an emergency meeting, so that we could sign off on it,” Fugazi said. “Because, as I said, this is going to put Stockton on the map — and we were happy to be partners in this effort.”
A March Stockton City Council agenda item described Pacific’s request for $7 million in federal funding to purchase equipment for the proposed medical school. The total project cost was estimated at $150 million.
Aiming for 2030 launch
Biedermann said the campaign will help launch the program by fall 2030, recruit faculty, support academic resources, and build the new medical education facility.
“It is a big capital and operating campaign that will make the school possible,” he said.
The physician shortage has implications beyond medical appointments. Health workforce researchers have tied the San Joaquin Valley’s access problems to poverty, transportation barriers, rural geography, language access, insurance gaps and the difficulty of recruiting health professionals to communities that have been historically underserved.
That is the promise Pacific and local leaders are now trying to make in Stockton: that a medical school can become more than a campus expansion.
Biedermann said the project should matter even to people with no connection to the university.
“You don’t have to be a University of the Pacific graduate to know the need in the Central Valley in terms of health care, physician shortage,” Biedermann said. “This is a California issue. The Central Valley is the future of California, and we need the support to make it a sustainable, healthy place.”
For Fugazi, the announcement was also a moment to speak differently about Stockton.
“We need to do a better job of selling our city, of talking about all the positive things,” Fugazi said. “Our glass is not half empty, it’s not half full, it’s refillable — and we’re spilling over today.”
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.
