Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Frank C. Snope, Pioneering Family Medicine Leader

Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Frank C. Snope, Pioneering Family Medicine Leader

It is with great sadness that the New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians shares the passing of Dr. Frank Cornelius Snope, a pioneering leader in family medicine, on October 20, 2025, at the age of 93.

A New Jersey native and founding Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers University), Dr. Snope helped shape the foundation of modern family medicine through his leadership, innovation, and mentorship. He also served as President of the American Academy of Family Physicians and was deeply respected for his compassion, intellect, and commitment to teaching.

NJAFP honors Dr. Snope’s lasting impact on our specialty and extends heartfelt condolences to his wife, Betsy, and the Snope family.

Who was Dr. Frank C. Snope?

Frank C. Snope, MD, Emeritus Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, was one of the seminal leaders in the national family medicine movement of the 1960s and 70s.

A New Jersey native, he graduated from Rutgers University and the New York University School of Medicine. After a rotating internship at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, NJ, he completed his residency training at the nation’s first family medicine residency, our affiliate, Hunterdon Medical Center, in Flemington, New Jersey.

Between 1960 and 1969, he practiced family medicine in rural Lebanon, NJ, amassing a large following of devoted patients and families. He was then recruited and served on the faculty of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (Pennsylvania State University) under Thomas Leaman, MD, before being recruited to found the department at Rutgers in 1973.

Dr. Snope was an educational pioneer. As the department’s first chair, he recruited key faculty who have been national leaders in family medicine and created a formal network of affiliated residency programs throughout central New Jersey. This network, the Rutgers Network of Affiliated Family Medicine Residencies, now statewide, is the oldest residency educational network in the country.

Along with departmental faculty, he pioneered the use of community preceptors for undergraduate medical education, a model that was subsequently emulated nationally. He also started a physician skills quality assessment program using trained patient actors and videotaped patient-doctor encounters, a program that foreshadowed today’s widely used Objective Standardized Clinical Examinations by more than thirty years.

After stepping down as Chair, he started the department’s geriatric fellowship, New Jersey’s first. The father of four sons, he lived with his wife, Betsy, in the Medford Lakes retirement community in Burlington County, NJ.