This time last year, the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education didn’t appear to be plural, although its enormous Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine building and adjacent housing, The Residents, were an impressive, attractive sight along Chad Colley Boulevard. A handsomely designed shopping center, The Village at Heritage, was being constructed across the double-laned boulevard.
Suddenly, there’s now a second, large educational facility completed beside the vast ARCOM building. At the other flank of ARCOM, a Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital is under construction.
While many are aware that since 2017, medical students are in Fort Smith studying to become doctors of osteopathic medicine, their presence in the community is now becoming more natural and visible. At the new village, neighbors are enjoying a coffee or picking up a pizza alongside the students who live above the shops.
Soon we, or our relatives, may be treated in the rehab hospital that is also a learning and teaching site for medical, physical and occupational therapy students. Patients in our medical centers are meeting medical students who care for them as part of their clinical rotations. Increasingly, we will know a local student enrolled in a degree program at the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education.
ACHE’s well-planned, swiftly built campus first changed the visual landscape of Chaffee Crossing but its mission to better the lives of Arkansans is now becoming real. By deploying its graduates into a state critically underserved in health care, the colleges intend to help lift and sustain the wellness of all its people, from now and into a healthier future.
In 2017, the first 150 prospective physicians entered medical school. Last month, its fourth class was selected and enrolled, raising the campus population to 600 medical students. In May, the inaugural medical school class will graduate and move on to medical residencies/graduate education programs, a four- to seven-year experience in giving care to patients under the supervision of teaching doctors.
Steadily, ARCOM is formalizing partnerships with Arkansas and regional health systems that will continue to train its graduates. And, at the end of their residencies, ARCOM graduates will become fully licensed.
If, after almost a decade of education here, those new physicians stay in Arkansas, the colleges will have realized their core goal of solving the shortage of doctors and health professionals needed to care for all of us.
It is a lengthy process, but the speed of the development of these state-of-the-art facilities comes from a community-based foundation that keeps a clear vision of the compelling, human needs that its graduates could meet in the very near future.
“We wouldn’t have built a medical school if we weren’t in dire need in Arkansas,” said Dr. Kyle Parker, CEO of the board of the private, non-profit colleges. “Medical school is the toughest one to do. This is what is so different than private business. We measure this in lives affected.”
There are other health care roles in need of new graduates. Each degree program added by the colleges will be chosen by its rank in need, he said. In July, the first class to seek degrees in physical and occupational therapy begin. Under consideration, according to greatest regional shortage, are a master’s program in nursing and a nurse practitioner degree program.
Even as the class of 2021 was under way, ACHE offered a one-year biomedical science master’s degree. Some 16 of that class of 40 will enter ARCOM to become physicians, as well.
Their May graduation was held virtually, due to COVID-19 precautions. There is probably no Arkansas school better prepared to fluidly convert to virtual teaching and learning, Parker said. Recognizing the nexus between technology, education and health care, ACHE invested in the most current tech capabilities.
Offering superior facilities and placing the campus at Chaffee Crossing were necessary choices, Parker said. The FCRA, charged with overseeing the conversion of former military base land into best public use, enthusiastically donated the first 200 acres to the non-profit colleges. Its aims dovetail with the ACHE mission – to best benefit the public while creating ripple effects of economic opportunity and well-planned growth of a balanced community.
ACHE planned for its land use and facilities as rigorously as it developed its educational curriculum, Parker said.
Involving distinguished national consultants, its master plan for development is comprehensive and progressive. Intentional density, living space over commercial ground floors, with extensive surrounding green space, recreational trails and parks is what young people value, he said – to walk and bike to get between where they live, work and study. It puts “wellness” of spirit and body into daily life, chiming with the philosophy of wellness that is a tenet of osteopathic medicine.
“I am often asked what it will take to keep these graduating doctors in Arkansas,” Parker recently wrote. “The answer is simple: We must make Arkansas a place they want to call home.”
To recruit the brightest from our own region, ACHE already has outreach programs from elementary through college to interest students in health professions. One such connection will be with Fort Smith Public Schools’ new Peak Innovation Center, under construction nearby at Zero Street and Painter Lane, which will have a health care career education track for grades 9-12.
An eye-catching, fast-growing campus is what we have been able to see of ACHE since 2017. There is more growth to come. But increasingly, we will be seeing its human capital, meeting them as neighbors, as fellow parents, as volunteers or church friends. They could be the educators who someday teach our children. Many will be the caring and capable professionals who help us become healthy.
