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Fortune
The first class of medical students stepped into the halls of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas, earlier this month – according to media reports.
The inaugural class of 48 students started at the four-year medical school, named after the Walmart heiress and richest woman in the world, on July 14 – Time reported.
Axios reported that the school accepted less than 3% of applicants and that a third of the students are from Arkansas.
The school is waiving the tuition for the first five cohorts of students, according to its website.
The school marks the latest foray by Walton into the health care space. In 2019, she founded the non-profit Whole Health Institute, which is headquartered near the school and her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Additionally, Walmart’s corporate offices are also in Bentonville.
Walton’s efforts are inspired by the way she was treated as a patient after a car accident in the 1980s, according to Time.
Walton’s medical school to take ‘whole health’ approach
The school says it will take a “whole health” approach to medical teaching, saying on its website that the curriculum “takes inclusive and collaborative approaches to care designed to promote resilience, prevent disease, and restore health.”
“The foundation [of the curriculum] is traditional medicine but enhanced with the humanities and the arts to improve the delivery of care—so we improve on how we [act] with patients and how we partner with patients,” Dr. Sharmila Makhija, dean and CEO of the school, told Time.
The magazine reported that Walton battled a bone infection, multiple surgeries, and lingering health issues for more than a decade, leading her to say “our health care system is broken.”
“(The students) will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the ‘sick-care’ side of things,” Walton told Time. “But I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy.”
