Although a large number of osteopathic physicians enter family practice, relatively little has been published about contemporary use of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) in this practice setting. In this original contribution, the authors begin constructing an “epidemiology” of somatic dysfunction, assessing prevalence and severity data for somatic dysfunction encountered in the family practice setting, as well as characterizing physician use of OMT. In addition, the authors formulate a novel composite measure based on prevalence and severity indices, which they term the “burden” of somatic dysfunction. Using this new measure, they were able to group anatomic regions using cluster analysis. The authors analyzed patient data gathered from three university-based, osteopathic family practice clinics. This data comprised 1331 patient encounters and 424 adult patients. Somatic dysfunction was diagnosed in almost one-third of patient encounters. In one-quarter of patient encounters, investigators used OMT.