As Native people face cuts and diminished access to health care, the country is getting its first medical degree-granting school to open a campus on sovereign tribal land.
The program is the result of a partnership between a tribal healthcare system, Gila River Health Care, and the University of Arizona.
The Gila River Indian Community has federally recognized sovereignty and controls a 600-square-mile territory that sits around 17 miles from Phoenix, Arizona. A little more than 14,000 people live on the largely rural reservation, according to 2020 Census data.
Like many Native groups, tribal members struggle with medical access, in large part due to the structural racism Native groups face.
“For too long, many of our young people who dreamed of becoming doctors had to leave home to pursue that goal,” said Stephen Roe Lewis, governor for the Gila River Indian Community, in a joint statement.
The ability to grant an “MD,” a medical doctorate, will make this school the first “allopathic” medical school on tribal land, according to materials from the university.
In 2020, the Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine jointly opened the first medical school on tribal land when it opened an “osteopathic” degree-granting institution. Both degrees allow their holders to legally practice medicine.
Training physicians in Native communities and embedding them within the health care system will boost their grasp of how cultural, social, and historical factors shape health, the University of Arizona said in a statement.
The school will open in July of next year. The university will admit 10 students per year, with each of those students receiving full scholarships for an accelerated, three-year program, paid for by a $25 million commitment from Gila River’s tribal health care system, according to a release. Students will spend the first 18 months training in Phoenix and a second 18 months in Sacaton, the tribe’s capital, the release said.
“By educating future physicians within a tribally operated healthcare system serving Native communities, we are creating a learning experience that cannot be replicated in a traditional academic medical center,” argued Fredric Wondisford, dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix, in the university release.
Significance. America’s doctor shortage hits Native tribes the hardest. Native populations have the lowest life expectancy of any demographic group in the country, and struggle the most with chronic diseases, mental health and substance abuse. They are also more likely to be uninsured.
Despite this, systemic underfunding has starved tribes of healthcare access. Within Arizona, for instance, tribes suffer from a shortage of physicians. A 2024 report from the University of Arizona listed the Gila River Indian Community as having particularly severe medical access troubles.
The Gila River partnership, which the university frames as centering medical training in the tribal community rather than on a university campus, drew inspiration from a rural medical school branch the university announced last year.
The power structure. The update comes at a difficult time for Native health equity. Native populations suffer from especially high poverty rates. During President Donald Trump’s second term, proposed changes to health programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are expected to further harm Native populations, which rely heavily on these programs due to poorly funded infrastructure and the sustained structural impact of colonialism. Trump’s grant cancellations have also impacted Native health programs.
