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Hello, this is Kirk Magleby, Chief Evangelist, Scripture Central. Years ago, I was on a business trip in New Orleans. I got in an animated conversation with an ardent Tulane Greenway fan. When I told him I was an alumnus at Brigham Young University, he replied sarcastically, BYU isn’t a real university. They don’t even have a medical school. Brigham Young University was founded in 1875. Sixteen years later, In 1891, a commercial school was formed. Today, it’s the highly regarded Marriott School of Business with 60,000 alumni worldwide. In 1973, the J. Ruben Clark Law School was founded. Today, it ranks number 28 among the 296 major law schools in the United States. Then on July 29, 2024, the long-awaited day finally arrived. 149 years after Brigham Young Academy first opened its doors, the first presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a blockbuster announcement. BYU will build a medical school. All three of the vocational prestige degrees, MBA, JD, and MD, will be available in Provost. There are only 195 medical schools in the United States offering MD or DO degrees, so a new school is a cause for celebration. Every year, about 200 BYU grads begin medical school somewhere.
BYU ranks 18th nationally in the number of its graduates who get accepted to medical school. But every year, hundreds of BYU grads apply and are not accepted. The new BYU Medical School will increase the number of BYU students to become medical doctors, which will bless lives locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. BYU’s new medical school will focus on education as opposed to research. It will not have a captive in-house teaching hospital, although it will be proximate to Utah Valley Hospital, which is a 395-bed Level 2 trauma center in Provost. The new school will have a decidedly international flavor with students from around the world, an emphasis on primary health care delivery in medically underserved areas and less developed countries. This will be an amazing new resource, supporting the church’s terrific global humanitarian initiative, Improving Women’s and Children’s Health. How many medical schools are there in the state of Utah? There are currently three. The University of Utah School of Medicine, founded in 1905, Rocky Vista University’s Washington County campus, opened in 2017, and the Nordic College of Osteopathic Medicine, which opened in Provo in 2021. The new BYU College of Medicine will be the fourth medical school in Utah.
Is the University of Utah concerned about competition from BYU? No. The Spencer Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah will continue to focus on high-quality healthcare delivery in Utah and surrounding United States. A new Salt Lake facility and a satellite campus in St. George will soon expand the UU’s medical footprint. BYU’s focus will be more international. The two medical schools will be highly complementary and expect to work together productively in what they call a model. Collaboration. When will the BYU Medical School accept its inaugural class? That has not yet been determined. It’s very common for new medical schools to take three or four years before they’re ready to welcome their first students. Where will the medical school be located? That has not yet been announced. Bw owns the old Provo High School property to the west of campus and the old Wasatch Elementary property to the east. Either of these sites might work. As a point of personal interest, I attended third grade at Wasatch Elementary before my family moved to Arizona. The Provo High property would allow convenient access across Freedom Boulevard to Utah Valley Hospital. How many other religious organizations in the United States sponsor medical schools?
Well, years ago, many medical schools had religious roots, but today, most have become secular. The Seventh Day Adventists have a noted medical school in Loma Linda, California. Mercy University in Georgia is closely affiliated with the Southern Baptist. Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City is heavily Jewish. In Roman Catholicism, very good Jesuit medical schools are located at St. Louis University, Loyola of Chicago, and Creighton in Omaha. Now the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joins this select group of contemporary faiths who have chosen to invest in medical education. What will a new BYU Medical School be called? That is not yet known, but odds are it’ll be named after Russell M. Nelson, a retired heart surgeon who has been an absolutely spectacular President of the Church since January 18th of 2018. President Nelson turns a Sprite 100 on September ninth, 2024. His name on a medical school would be an appropriate gift for the Church to give him on that momentous anniversary. Eleven of the 17 prophets in this dispensation are memorialized with a building named after them on BWU campus. Latter-day Saints have a long history with medical training. Patty Sessions and Zyna Hunting headed the Board of Health for the city of Nauvoo, Illinois.
In 1849, Phoebe Angel presided over the Council of Health in Salt Lake City. In the 1870s, Brigham Young as Church President and Eliza Arsnow as Relief Society President, sent sisters such as Romania Pratt and Emma Lillenquist back east, where they earned medical degrees. Latter-day Saints were some of the first female medical doctors in the United States. In 1882, Deseret Hospital was organized in Salt Lake City, staffed primarily by Latterer Saint women doctors. In 1905, LDS Hospital opened, the same year the University of Utah Medical School began operating. The Children’s Ward at LDS Hospital that began in 1913, supported by the primary. Nine years later, the primary built the LDS Children’s Convalescent Hospital, forerunner of the famed Primary Children’s Hospital that began in 1953. In 1924, the Cottonwood Maternity Hospital opened, supported by the Relief Society. By 1963, the church owned 15 hospitals throughout the Intermountain region. Then in 1975, the church donated all 15 hospitals to a new nonprofit, Intermountain Health care, recently rebranded as simply Intermountain Health. Intermountain Health currently operates 33 hospitals in seven Western states and has annual revenues of $14 billion. Intermountain Health will be a strategic partner with the new BYU Medical School, offering clinical and lab experience to BYU students.
When the church divested its hospital properties in 1975, the first presence, he specifically said that with the expansion of the church around the world, it was difficult to justify the provision of curative services in a single affluent geographical locality, and that the was going to focus on the health needs of the worldwide church. Soon, the church will have a medical school with an international emphasis that will strengthen its ability to meet the health needs of its own worldwide membership and at the same time bolster its global humanitarian outreach. How grand is the church’s vision for global humanitarianism? Led by the Relief Society, the church is helping millions of God’s children reach their potential by reducing poverty, alleviating malnutrition, and prioritizing the health and well-being of women and children. Scripture Central recently published an exciting video describing this tremendous Women and Children initiative. What are some of the things the church has done to get ready for a BYU Medical School? Collegium Esculapium, an organization of Latter-day State Medical Professionals, was founded in 1983. The current President is Wetherford Clayton, Emeritus General Authority 70, who practiced as an OB-GYN for 28 years before entering full-time church service.
Many Latter-day State Medical Professionals are already serving medical missions around the world. The new BYU Medical School will increase opportunities for meaningful service from this highly select group of very qualified volunteers. Emulating the attributes of the savior, the master healer and teacher, the group’s motto is Teachers who heal and healers who teach. Cecil O’ Samuelson was a physician who taught rheumatology at the University of Utah and then became dean of the School of Medicine. He was also a Senior Vice President of Intermountain Health care. He served as President of BYU from 2003 to 2014. Now, medical schools are notoriously expensive, but the church is well-prepared in this area. In March 2024, the church is openly reported stock portfolio exceeded $50 billion. And publicly traded equities are only one asset class amongst several the church holds in reserve. The Salt Lake Tribune on July 29, 2024, quoted Tyler Johnson, a Latterer Saint physician on the faculty at Stanford Medical School, saying, The church is at a place in its history when it can use the particular gifts we’ve been given as a people to bless the world. At most medical schools, there’s a portion of the curriculum dedicated to international health.
At BYU’s future school, it is part of the Razon detra, the very reason for being. The apostle Luke was a physician. President Russell M. Nelson and apostle Dale G. Renland are physicians. This is the first time in the history of the church in the dispensation of the fullness of that we’ve had two medical doctors in the first pregnancy in the Quorum of the Twelve. This is why BYU is building a medical school. The time is right. We are baptizing tens of thousands in places like the DR Congo, where many lack access to basic health services such as neonatal resuscitation, immunizations, and deworming. The Relief Society is spearheading a magnificent global effort to deliver nutrition and health services to millions of women and children in low-income countries. A church-affiliated medical school will bless our members and vast numbers of their neighbors. We have the vision and able leadership from many inspired senior church leaders. We have the capacity, both in human resources and treasure, and the world has a great need. This is the right thing for the Church of Jesus Christ to do. It’s what the master healer would do if he were here. And he has said, Behold, I come quickly.
When our savior and redeemer returns, he will not ask about the number of square feet on the in our home or the size of our investment portfolio. He will ask to see how we administer relief to the sick and the afflicted, as in Jacob 2:19. As an enthusiastic BYU alumnus, one of the more than 500,000 worldwide. I say, hooray. We are finally going to have a medical school. The world is truly our campus. Happy birthday, President Nelson..
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dyejo
