||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||
A New Kind of Medical School opened its doors earlier this month in Arkansas, a state that is 48th highest in maternal deaths from childbirth and teen age pregnancies, in addition to a general population that has many preventable health problems.
The 48 first year medical students were selected from over 2,000 applicants from all over the country who were seeing something new in medical education. This school is the dream and product of its founder Alice L. Walton, the richest woman in the United States and an heir of her family’s fortune from their business: Walmart. Thus the school acronym (AWSOM) is based on her name. In addition to the normal emphasis on sciences and the arts of diagnosis and treatment of conditions and illnesses, the school is infused with the other arts, those more often found in Art Museums.
Preventive medicine is another focus, given that many illnesses and conditions are the result of lifestyle choices and practices. The students will have access to gardens and gardening. I’d have to read the Time Magazine article again to recall whether there is also emphasis on wellness derived from exercise and physical fitness, but I do recall that Faculty from other major medical schools have been involved in the planning and will be involved in some of the direct teaching.
Alice Park, who wrote the article, points out that part of the inspiration for Alice Walton was her experience after an automobile accident in the 1980s left her with long lasting medical conditions and their treatments that led her to believe there should be more to medicine than the ‘hard’ sciences, even though her finances were not the major obstacles in getting the best (or any) medical care in the way they are for people in poverty and other limiting circumstances.
Instead of quoting (and likely misquoting) the article here, I’ll simply offer the address of the article from Time Magazine, July 14, 2025 here:
You might find getting a copy of Time Magazine from July14, 2025, easier than reading it online. I wish I had done that. But what I can do here is advise you not to be distracted by all the online ads, other articles and distractions throughout and following the Alice Park article hidden in the weeds of the internet. Alice Park is senior correspondent of health and medical matters for Time Magazine.
P.S. I’m a little uncomfortable imagining that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might actually approve of AWSOM, but perhaps what we need is cooperation and collaboration between apposing poles of thought and practice. And Kennedy is in an awesomely powerful position.
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