UW-Madison: School of Medicine and Public Health MD program ranked Tier 1 for primary care

School recognized for meeting a critical physician workforce need by U.S. News & World Report 

MADISON, Wis. ‒ Today, U.S. News & World Report announced its Best Medical Schools rankings for 2026, ranking the MD program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health as Tier 1 for primary care for the first time.

This Tier 1 ranking, achieved by only 16 schools across the country, means it is among the highest-performing programs in the United States for successfully addressing the nation’s primary care physician shortage.

“This is the first time our medical school has been recognized as Tier 1 for primary care, reflecting our commitment to addressing critical physician workforce shortages,” said Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and vice chancellor for medical affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Out of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, about half contain federally designated primary care shortage areas. We must close that gap to meet our vision of healthy people and healthy communities.”

U.S. News & World Report based this primary care ranking on the proportion of a medical school’s 2017 to 2019 graduates who are practicing in a primary care specialty in family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, geriatrics, general practice or internal medicine-pediatrics as of 2025. It also considers data on program selectivity and faculty-student ratio.

Primary care doctors are key to effective health care, according to Dr. Gwen McIntosh, associate dean for students and professor of pediatrics at the school.

“The primary care physician is meant to be the first stop for patients in the health care system,” she said. “It is mission critical to know that there are enough primary care clinicians out there for everybody in the state to have access to one.” 

Medical students at the school get valuable exposure to primary care from their first weeks of study when they are assigned to a clinical preceptor, most of whom practice in primary care. These preceptors are practicing physicians who graduated from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, practice within approximately an hour’s drive from Madison, and agree to help teach outpatient clinical skills. Students meet with their preceptors during their first three semesters to integrate classroom instruction with honing clinical techniques.

“For example, during the weeks that students are learning about the cardiac physical exam in class, when they go to their preceptor’s clinic, the expectation is that they practice a cardiac physical exam,” McIntosh said.

In later phases of the curriculum, many students expand on clinical learning in locations around the state, including small towns and rural areas.

“Putting our students out into smaller communities, to really get more experience of what it is like to practice medicine in different environments — that is important,” she said.  

The essential nature of primary care is evident in rural areas, where local primary care doctors develop strong relationships with their patients and identify when their treatment needs are complex enough to require referral to specialists elsewhere in the state. Rural health topics are integrated throughout the curriculum and are a focal point of the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine, which is a program within the school that admits and trains medical students committed to improving the health of rural communities. 

The MD program maintained its Tier 2 ranking for research, indicating that it is within the top 50th to 84th percentile of medical schools for high performance in research. All graduate and professional degree programs in the school that were ranked by U.S. News & World Report in 2026 are among the highest-ranked graduate and professional degree programs in the United States, including an 11th-place ranking in biostatistics, a key area of expertise for evidence-based medicine and medical research.

“The ability to seek insights from complex, large-scale biomedical data — skills taught in our highly-ranked biostatistics program — is essential for discovering solutions to the world’s greatest health challenges,” Ahuja said. 

Nearly 20 programs across UW–Madison ranked in their respective Top 10 lists. Full rankings for programs in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health include:

• Medicine: For MD programs, U.S. News & World Report’s methodology groups schools into Tier 1 (16 schools), Tier 2 (36 schools), Tier 3 (36 schools), and Tier 4 (15 schools). The UW School of Medicine and Public Health MD program is ranked as Tier 1 for Primary Care and Tier 2 for Research.
  • The outlet also ranks MD programs based on the percentage of alumni who earned degrees between 2017 and 2019 that are practicing in federally designated rural areas or health professional shortage areas, or in a primary care field. These additional rankings include 18th in most MD graduates practicing in rural areas, 48th in MD most graduates practicing in primary care, and 63rd in most MD graduates practicing in medically underserved areas.
• Physical Therapy: 25th (six-way tie) among 278 ranked programs.
• Public Health: 39th (ten-way tie) among 224 ranked programs.
• Biostatistics: 11th (two-way tie), encompassing the Biomedical Data Science PhD program offered by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and a Biostatistics option within the Statistics PhD offered by the UW–Madison School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences. All graduate programs at UW–Madison are overseen by the Graduate School.