Oil billionaire Harold Hamm has given the University of Oklahoma a record $150 million, the largest single gift in the university's history, to fund diabetes research and reshape health outcomes across a state facing poor health outcomes and rising rates of multiple chronic conditions. The commitment splits into $50 million for the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center and $100 million for the health campus's broader academic and research enterprise, and it comes as the university renames its college, hospital and research facilities the Harold Hamm Health Campus.
As reported by The Oklahoman, Hamm is now the largest individual donor in OU history, having given nearly $250 million to the university over his lifetime. University President Joseph Harroz Jr. said discussions with Hamm about this latest gift began roughly five years ago, according to the same report. Hamm, who founded Continental Resources and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s, helped establish the OU Health Harold Hamm Diabetes Center back in 2007, and the Harold Hamm Foundation later pledged $34 million to the center over ten years starting in 2018.
Harroz did not mince words about the stakes. “It’s an absolute crisis,” he said, per the outlet's reporting. That framing lines up with the state's numbers: Oklahoma ranked 47th in health outcomes in both 2023 and 2024, and the United Health Foundation reported that Oklahoma was one of six states with a significant increase in residents suffering multiple chronic conditions in its 2025 study, with the prevalence climbing from 12.8% to 15%.
A Diabetes Crisis Years in the Making
Diabetes sits at the center of that crisis. The Oklahoma Department of Health found that 13.2% of adult Oklahomans had been diagnosed with diabetes as of 2024, surpassing the 12% national average, with rates approaching 25% among seniors and disproportionately affecting African American and Native American residents, according to the Oklahoma Department of Health. The department also notes that prediabetes affects an estimated one in three adults statewide.
The university has set a formal goal to reduce diabetes-related cardiovascular complications and deaths in Oklahoma by 30% over the next five years, according to the University of Oklahoma. Hamm's donation is meant to fund recruitment of leading scientists along with construction of new diabetes-treatment technology and infrastructure, and the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center has already grown its National Institutes of Health grant funding from $5 million to $33 million. Hamm also established the Harold Hamm International Prize for Biomedical Research in Diabetes, which the university describes as the world's largest international prize of its kind, and he has publicly advocated for more affordable and accessible insulin, including support for legislation that sought to cap patients' out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month.
New Leadership for an Expanding Research Enterprise
Executing the diabetes push falls to Dr. John P. Kirwan, recruited through the university's Project 200 initiative and named executive director of the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center in June, per the university. Kirwan will also serve as vice provost for diabetes programs and hold the Chickasaw Nation Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research. He previously increased annual research enterprise funding from $59 million to $114 million, approximately 93%, at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the university noted when announcing his hire.
“The most important diabetes discoveries are still ahead,” Hamm said, according to The Oklahoman's account of the announcement. Project 200 itself aims to recruit more than 200 world-class researchers to the health campus, and Jonathan W. Curtright said the initiative will bring more clinical trials, new treatments and recent discoveries to Oklahoma patients sooner. The health campus's research enterprise has already earned Oklahoma its first top 100 national ranking in NIH funding.
Federal Attention and a Campus in Transition
The renamed Harold Hamm Health Campus spans six health colleges and a graduate school, enrolls more than 4,100 students, and trains 80% of Oklahoma's health care workforce, according to the university. OU Health, which operates facilities in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Edmond, Yukon, Lawton, McAlester and Norman, was formed in 2021 when the university merged its College of Medicine faculty practice and hospital networks with the University Hospitals Authority and Trust to create Oklahoma's first comprehensive academic health system, according to OU Health.
That restructuring set the stage for growing federal interest. In August, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited the OU Health campus alongside federal lawmakers to evaluate statewide efforts on diabetes and cancer, per the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. The visit underscored the scale of the challenge OU is now betting $150 million on solving.
An Oil Fortune Behind the Gift
Hamm's gift arrives alongside major activity elsewhere in his business empire. Forbes estimated his net worth at approximately $19 billion as of this month, ranking him #145 on its world billionaires list, according to OK Energy Today. Hoodline has previously reported that Continental Resources signed a preliminary memorandum this month to explore and develop oil across 126,000 acres in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt, expanding on prior exploration in Argentina and Turkey.
The new OU commitment supports health education, research and discovery broadly, even as questions remain about how quickly the promised 30% reduction in diabetes complications can be achieved.
