The following is a 3:00-minute read
This fall, the doors will open to a new medical school in Arkansas. Alice Walton, the Walmart heiress and the world’s wealthiest woman, has committed to paying the tuition for the first five graduating classes.
The Alice Walton School of Medicine is a reconceptualized medical institution. The inaugural class consists of 48 students, selected from over 2,000 applicants. Located in Bentonville, Arkansas—the headquarters of Walmart—the school shares a campus with Walton’s existing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, both of which sit on Walton family land.
“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.” — Time
Each day begins with students tending to a learning farm, where they grow produce and learn basic agriculture. The campus also features a rooftop garden and a reflection pool, integrating nature into daily education.
In 2019, Walton founded the Whole Health Institute, an organization that partners with employers and healthcare providers to incorporate holistic care into the conventional medical system.
While graduates will earn allopathic medical degrees (MDs), the curriculum at the Alice Walton School of Medicine has been reimagined. For example, while most accredited U.S. medical schools recommend around 20–25 hours of nutrition education, AWSOM requires 50 hours. The curriculum blends traditional medical science with holistic disciplines—nutrition, psychology, physical activity, fresh food, and natural therapies—woven throughout the students’ education rather than offered as electives.
Walton says:
“Students will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the ‘sick-care’ side of things, but I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy.”
Walton’s passion for healthcare reform stems from personal experience. In the 1980s, after a serious car accident near Acapulco, she was airlifted back to the U.S. and required more than ten surgeries to repair her shattered legs. She has been involved in several car accidents, including one where she fatally struck a pedestrian; no charges were filed. These events exposed her to what she calls a “broken healthcare system.”
Her goal is not only to educate physicians but to influence the entire healthcare system. While she’s proud of the curriculum, she has expressed concern that it will mean little if graduates aren’t allowed to practice what they’ve learned due to systemic limitations.
Best of all, the acronym for the school happens to be: AWSOM.
This inaugural class of students will be the first to pioneer this model of medical education and determine how well it is accepted and integrated into the broader medical community.
