Walton’s investment as much as Arkansas, and few states are in such desperate need. Arkansas ranks 48th out of the 50
states in the share of adults in fair or poor health. The state also has the nation’s highest maternal death and teen birth rates. One in six of its residents lives
Alice Walton School of Medicine (AWSOM) She is paying the tuition of her first
five graduating classes. (A spokesper- son declined to provide the school’s operating budget, tuition costs, and other information about its activities.) Walton’s goal of enhancing tradi-
tional medical education with the arts, humanities, and “whole health” prin- ciples stresses preventive medicine. Addressing the whole patient includes discussing behavior, diet, and lifestyle, not just physical symptoms. Rather than reinforce a healthcare
system that relies upon test after test to diagnose a sick patient’s symptoms, “I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy,” Walton said. As a result, the school’s curriculum
differs sharply from that of most tra- ditional medical schools. While some 80% of medical education focuses on biology, 60% of premature deaths are due to such behavioral factors as poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking. The doctor-patient conversations
that should be at the heart of effective medical care are all too rare today, said Sharmila Makhija, AWSOM’s founding dean and chief executive officer, an oncologist who previously ran the obstetrics department at New York’s Montefiore Health System. She intends to ensure that the Wal-
ton curriculum helps future doctors appreciate the need to become more compassionate and empathetic. While medical school accredita-
tion organizations recommend that schools devote at least 25 hours of instruction to nutrition, most schools
average only 20 hours, and in some cases, offer such courses only as elec- tives.
The Walton school, by contrast,
devotes more than 50 hours to nutri- tion-related training, including culi- nary classes that will teach students — and in turn, their patients — how best to cook fresh food. Students will also spend time gardening and at a farm to enhance their knowledge of produce and seasonality. Because of Walton’s belief that
access to art can boost health, all her students will take an art course that includes drawing one another and studying pieces in the museum to sharpen their observation skills. In addition, says Makhija, her
school expects its students and fac- ulty to engage in community service. “Wherever they go to work,” she said, “they’ve got to understand who they are serving.” While some doctors are wary of
what they fear might be the dilution of the core, pure-science focus of tradi- tional medical education, Walton and Makhija respond that their curricu- lum is an enhancement of traditional education, not a substitution for it. These innovative curriculum
changes did not come out of thin air, or even Walton’s own lengthy, unfor- tunate experience with the country’s broken healthcare system. They came partly from work sup-
ported by the Heartland Whole Health Institute, which she founded in 2019 to study healthcare and delivery. No state stands to benefit from
below the federal poverty line, and poverty rates for children exceed the national rate. Four of the state’s 75 counties have no doctors, and anoth- er eight have only a single doctor and no hospital. To ensure that her fellow Arkan-
sans in underserved areas are among the first to benefit from her invest- ment, Walton unveiled in 2024 a $700 million, 30-year partnership among Mercy, one of the state’s largest healthcare systems, and her own foundation, Heartland. Under the agreement, the Alice
Walton Foundation will develop a $350 million outpatient center of care for specialty services in Benton- ville, the Walton family’s hometown; Mercy will provide $350 million to build a new cardiac care center at its hospital in Roger, but declined to answer questions about what kind of care and when. In addition to expanding access
to healthcare and improving its qual- ity, Walton also hopes to reduce ever-growing medical costs, which accounted for over 17% of gross domestic product in 2023, the high- est percentage among high-income nations. Walton herself appears to have few
illusions about how difficult it will be to change the healthcare system’s financial incentives. “We can have whatever curricu-
lum changes we want,” she said. “But if they are thrown out in an environ- ment where they are not practicing whole health, then it’s for naught.”
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and an expert on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.
JANUARY 2026 | NEWSMAX 29
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