BENTONVILLE, Ark. — The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine has named a surgeon and women’s health expert to lead the new medical school in Bentonville.
Dr. Sharmila Makhija has been selected as the school's founding dean and chief executive officer.
President of Health Care Transformation Walter Harris says Dr. Makhija has a career that spans across educational, clinical, and commercial settings. It would help promote Walton’s vision of creating a new pipeline of physicians.
"We think that given our founders and her personal experience around health, having someone who can teach and train future docs to become a whole person-centered clinician, as well as one who can be very technically savvy in their work, we think a Dean with that kind of background will serve us well here," said Harris.
"The leader who comes in with a humble spirit creates a culture of doctors in the future creates a culture of staff who follows that, so she fits us in many, many ways," added Harris.
Dr. Makhija is an expert on gynecological cancer and served most recently as the department chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Harris explained that the school believes Dr. Makhija would help continue the school's whole health approach.
"If a patient goes in the hospital, we want them to be motivated and encouraged to know they got to come out of there healthier than they were when they went in. And when they leave the hospital system, we want them to take charge of that. So they don't have to find themselves going back into a system because they didn't have the proper tools and education to get there," Harris explained.
Harris said that the program would be a national medical school saying that, "we bring them all here together and learn these new methods of taking care of oneself. And then they leave here between keeping the region stable and impacting and influencing the rest of the country. It is a national medical school with a national influence and national reach."
He added that they'd be working with the existing health systems to impact the surrounding region.
Dr. Makhija is set to begin her new role as founding dean and CEO in May. The school is pending accreditation, but the first students should start classes in the fall of 2025.
The medical school president said that they're "looking at clinicians who will come in to help teach our students and we're looking at clinical partners coming in to help us shape the school as well. We are very busy trying to grow the footprint of the school in ways that are going to be helpful for our students. But a ton of our work will be involved in community interactions, getting them engaged in the process."
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