\u201cI heard whispers about the school back in December 2021,\u201d says Rebecca Wilson, who grew up in nearby Cave Springs and plans to remain in Arkansas to improve the health care there. \u201cHearing how revolutionary their outlook on medicine was, and how it was a part of the DNA and not something adapted to the curriculum like some of the other schools\u2014that was unique.\u201d <\/p>\n
Read More<\/strong>: The Race to Explain Why More Young Adults Are Getting Cancer<\/a><\/p>\n Visually, the school lives up to its acronym: AWSOM. The building, with soaring glass walls, is located on Walton family property and includes not just a wellness studio and gym, but a rooftop park, healing gardens where students can study, growing gardens for producing healthy foods, and a reflection pond. A path from the rooftop park leads through the Ozark forest directly to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which Walton built in 2011, as a reminder to the students about the link between healing, art, science, and humanity. <\/p>\n Walton is covering tuition for the first five graduating classes. For her investment, Walton anticipates that some of the newly minted doctors will bring what they learn to the local community\u2014specifically to underserved areas in Arkansas, Walton’s home state. But her grander vision is for the model she creates to be mirrored at other medical schools across the country\u2014so that what started in northwest Arkansas can spread to other regions with few health resources.<\/p>\n Creating a new medical school in 2025 isn\u2019t an easy or obvious project, especially when the mission is to redesign medical education. \u201cMy brother Jim said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a big undertaking, Alice.\u2019 I think my big brother was trying to protect me from myself,\u201d she says with a smile.<\/p>\n But Walton\u2019s firsthand experience as a patient set her on this path. After a serious car accident in the 1980s, she battled a bone infection, multiple surgeries, and lingering health issues for more than a decade. Walton grew convinced that \u201cour health care system is broken\u201d and that someone needed to catalyze change.<\/p>\n Medicine in the U.S. has long incentivized doctors to respond to people\u2019s symptoms\u2014by ordering many rounds of tests and procedures, to name two cost-driving examples\u2014rather than trying to prevent them in the first place. The doctor-patient conversations that should be at the heart of effective medical care are rare today, and patients are saddled with exorbitant fees that haven\u2019t always contributed to better health outcomes. The system also contributes to care deserts in rural America. Arkansas, in particular, ranks 48th out of the 50 states in the share of adults in fair or poor health. The state also has the highest maternal death and teen birth rates in the U.S.<\/p>\n Where do you start if you want to recreate health care from scratch? There isn\u2019t a single solution, and any strategy needs to account for not just how doctors are trained and practice medicine, but also the financial incentives that currently drive those practices. In 2019, Walton founded the Heartland Whole Health Institute, located steps from the new medical school, which focuses on research, health advocacy, and education about the policies and financial systems necessary to advance preventive care. With AWSOM, she is turning her attention to finding a better way to train the people who will populate that system: future doctors. <\/p>\n \u201cThey will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the \u2018sick-care\u2019 side of things,\u201d Walton says. But \u201cI wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy.\u201d <\/p>\n That includes integrating emerging technologies like AI and digital health innovations that can help people track and manage health conditions like diabetes, obesity, and blood pressure. \u201cWe are in a huge transition point right now in terms of technology,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m really excited about the potential.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n An art-infused curriculum<\/p>\n Her vision for an innovative curriculum at the medical school began taking shape after a meeting with Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and a fellow Arkansan, who became AWSOM\u2019s chair of the board of directors. (AWSOM also has a formal collaboration with Stanford, in which half a dozen of the university\u2019s faculty will teach incoming students and mentor both students and faculty.) <\/p>\n To helm the school, Walton chose Dr. Sharmila Makhija, a gynecologic cancer surgeon from Alabama who shared Walton\u2019s commitment to whole-health principles and improving the quality of health care in the South. <\/p>\n \u201cThe foundation [of the curriculum] is traditional medicine but enhanced with the humanities and the arts to improve the delivery of care\u2014so we improve on how we [act] with patients and how we partner with patients,\u201d says Makhija.<\/p>\n Read More<\/strong>: The Surprising Reason Rural Hospitals Are Closing<\/a><\/p>\n Walton\u2019s personal passion for art informed and infused the new school\u2019s humanities-based approach. Introduced to watercolors by her mother, she made her first art purchase\u2014a print of Picasso\u2019s Blue Nude\u2014as a child from her father\u2019s Walton\u2019s 5 & 10 in Bentonville. As an adult, she collected key pieces of American art spanning five centuries, then founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville to share what is now a collection of more than 3,500 pieces with the community, for free. \u201cArt was a foreign thing here,\u201d she says. \u201cMuseums weren\u2019t a part of our life.\u201d But when the museum opened in 2011, it resonated, becoming a center for social events.<\/p>\n Crystal Bridges and AWSOM are physically attached for a reason. An integral part of the medical school curriculum involves exposure to and appreciation for the lessons that healers can learn from art. \u201cIn the time I was going in and out of hospitals, I had to grab whatever I could find to keep my sanity,\u201d Walton says of how painting watercolors and reading art books helped in her recovery. \u201cI do believe the art world and the health care world need to collide more, and both will benefit from it.\u201d<\/p>\n All students will take a course, for example, that involves drawing one another and studying pieces in the museum. The hope is to sharpen their skills of observation and empathy. \u201cIt sounds basic, but you start to talk about, \u2018What did it feel like to observe someone closely, or how did it feel to be seen?\u2019\u201d says Makhija. \u201cIt\u2019s not a usual way in the medical world to think and talk, so it\u2019s a different language, but that\u2019s part of the goal: to help them understand different modes of speaking, understanding, and relating to others.\u201d<\/p>\n On a wintry January day, Walton walks through the museum\u2019s installation and stops at one of her favorites: a gigantic depiction of the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, \u201dWe the People.\u201d The original calligraphy is recreated with thousands of shoelaces in different colors and fabrics.<\/p>\n On the opposite wall, Walton chose to place an array of portraits of \u201cwho we are as people,\u201d she says, ranging from one of George Washington painted by Charles Willson Peale in the early 1780s to a digital installation featuring a fracking worker from North Dakota\u2014\u201ctwo of my boyfriends George and Johnny,\u201d as Walton describes them. The series also includes the first known portrait of an American, painted in Colonial times, and a portrait of a Black woman painted after the Ferguson riots. \u201cWe don\u2019t only go by time periods,\u201d she says of the way the pieces in the museum are displayed. \u201cSome of the fun is putting George and Johnny together.\u201d <\/p>\n The installation spans pieces from all time periods, all races, and all walks of life\u2014a theme she infuses in the medical school as well. \u201cHealth care is the most inequitable,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of that is because we don\u2019t have doctors and health-care providers who look like a lot of people. It is a big issue, and it is a huge piece of the problem in why people don\u2019t get health care.\u201d<\/p>\n Read More<\/strong>: How Health Insurance Monopolies Affect Your Care<\/a><\/p>\n Walton believes that every piece should be displayed and enjoyed by the public, not tucked away in storage. So in 2017, she created the Art Bridges program, a collaboration with more than 250 smaller museums around the country that essentially extends the available wall space for pieces by rotating works constantly. <\/p>\n That same focus on putting the community first infuses the training that the new medical students receive so that they never lose sight of why they became physicians: to serve the patients that need them the most. To reiterate their broader role in society as healers, all of the new students started community service work on their third day on campus. \u201cWe expect the students, the faculty, everybody to be of service to the community,\u201d says Makhija. \u201cWherever they go to work, they\u2019ve got to understand who they are serving.\u201d<\/p>\n About 2,000 students applied to the school\u2019s 48 spots, and many who were chosen share an interest in bringing health care to underserved regions, particularly Arkansas. One is Emily Bunch, who grew up in Little Rock and was drawn to the school\u2019s focus on nutrition education, which traditional medical schools tend to gloss over. While the medical school accreditation organization recommends<\/a> that curriculums devote at least 25 hours of instruction to nutrition, most schools average about 20 hours<\/a>, in some cases only as electives. AWSOM\u2019s curriculum currently includes more than 50 hours of nutrition-related training, including culinary classes. <\/p>\n Doctors-to-be will spend class time gardening and at a teaching farm, learning about the seasonality of fresh foods and how to cook them\u2014then passing those lessons onto patients. \u201cThere is a lack of understanding of nutrition and so much exposure to fast food,\u201d Bunch says of her own struggles with weight and finding healthy food options growing up. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until a doctor talked to me about nutrition in a whole-health way that I understood the mental and psychological aspects of weight, and that empowered me to finally take control of my health.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big problem in Arkansas and a big part of the reason I wanted to become a doctor\u2014to serve as a guide for other people,\u201d Bunch says. \u201cArkansas desperately needs more whole-health and preventive care.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Walton-Medical-School-8.jpg\")
Entry of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine Timothy Hursley\u2014Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of MedicineA broken system<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Walton-Medical-School-4.jpg\")
Exterior view of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine building with Ugo Rondinone’s ‘The Melancholic’ in the foreground at the right Timothy Hursley\u2014Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AWSOM_Students_4.jpg\")
Divya Purswani, Samantha Hong, John (Gavin) Miller, Rebecca Wilson, Allison Freeman at the Alice L. Walton School of MedicineDoctors of the future<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Walton-Medical-School-12.jpg\")
Education spaces at the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine Timothy Hursley\u2014Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine<\/p>\n