On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Some came from neighboring cities, others from urban centers in Michigan and New York. Almost all had a choice in where they could become doctors but took a chance on the new school because of its unique approach to rethinking medical education.

Named after its founder—the world’s richest woman and an heir to the Walmart fortune—the school will train students over the next four years in a radically different way from the method most traditional medical schools use. And that’s the point. Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school’s graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don’t prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors—from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices—that contribute to wellbeing.

Those aren’t new ideas, of course, but traditional medicine has only paid lip service to them. Experts have noted that while as much as 80% of medical education focuses on biology, about 60% of premature deaths are due to behavioral factors including lifestyle habits like diet, exercise, and smoking. “I applied to 34 schools, and nowhere else are they doing this,” says Ellie Andrew-Vaughn, who arrived in Bentonville from Ann Arbor, Mich.

“I heard whispers about the school back in December 2021,” says Rebecca Wilson, who grew up in nearby Cave Springs and plans to remain in Arkansas to improve the health care there. “Hearing 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—that was unique.”

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.

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—specifically 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—so that what started in northwest Arkansas can spread to other regions with few health resources.

Creating a new medical school in 2025 isn’t an easy or obvious project, especially when the mission is to redesign medical education. “My brother Jim said, ‘Oh, that’s a big undertaking, Alice.’ I think my big brother was trying to protect me from myself,” she says with a smile.

But Walton’s 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 “our health care system is broken” and that someone needed to catalyze change.