- Details
- By Brian Edwards
- Health Care
Gila River Health Care will invest more than $25 million to establish a University of Arizona medical school branch on the Gila River Indian Community, a long-term workforce investment aimed at training and retaining physicians within tribal and rural health systems.
The tribally operated health system has committed the funding through 2034 for faculty positions, full-tuition scholarships and educational infrastructure. The partners say the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Phoenix Regional Medical Branch will be the nation’s first MD-granting medical school branch located on the lands of a sovereign tribal nation.
Beginning in July 2027, 10 students annually will be admitted to the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Phoenix’s three-year Primary Care Accelerated Program through its new Gila River branch. Students will complete the first 18 months of medical school in Phoenix before relocating to Sacaton, on the Gila River Indian Community, for 18 months of clinical training within GRHC.
The tribe’s investment is designed to address a persistent challenge for tribal and rural health systems: recruiting and retaining physicians.
The Indian Health Service reported a 38% physician vacancy rate in fiscal 2024, compared with a 30% vacancy rate across all health care providers, according to the Government Accountability Office. Native physicians also remain significantly underrepresented nationally: American Indian and Alaska Native people accounted for just 0.3% of active U.S. physicians in 2024, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
GRHC and the university are also exploring primary care residency programs at the health system, potentially allowing Gila River to build a physician pipeline extending from medical school through residency and into practice. The University of Arizona said physicians are more likely to practice where they train, making the location of medical education part of the partners’ workforce strategy.
“For too long, many of our young people who dreamed of becoming doctors had to leave home to pursue that goal,” Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in a statement. “This partnership with the University of Arizona changes that.”
Robert Pablo, chairman of GRHC’s board, said rural health systems have struggled to recruit trained professionals and characterized the partnership as an opportunity to start physicians’ careers in the communities that need them.
The announcement does not disclose the project’s total cost, the university’s financial contribution or whether Indian Health Service or other federal funding will support the initiative.
The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the U.S. could face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036.
