Russell M. Nelson, a renowned heart surgeon turned global religious leader, graduated from, taught at, and handed over his medical journals to the University of Utah’s medical school.
Now, as Nelson nears his 100th birthday, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is prescribing a new health care future not for his alma mater but for his faith’s leading academic institution by launching a medical school at Brigham Young University.
A Monday news release said the new enterprise — like Nelson, who led the faithful during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been a strong advocate for serving medical needs around the world — will have a major focus on “international health issues affecting members” as well as “the church’s worldwide humanitarian efforts.”
The school will be “focused on teaching with research in areas of strategic importance” to the Utah-based faith, the release added, but will stop short of creating its own hospital or hospital system.
[Read more: Answers to your questions about the LDS Church’s plans for a BYU medical school]
Rather, BYU is in talks with Intermountain Health, a regional health care powerhouse, regarding “a mutually beneficial clinical relationship.”
“Also,” the release added, “it is anticipated that the medical school will seek collaborative relationships with various entities in Utah, including the University of Utah.”
The announcement, signed by the church’s governing First Presidency, did not provide any specific dates or timeline but stressed the hope to recruit students from abroad as well as from within the United States.
Utah currently has three medical schools. The biggest is public, at the U. in Salt Lake City. The other three are private: Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine in Provo and a branch of Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine near St. George. Another private school, Roseman University, with a campus in South Jordan, is developing a medical doctor program.
In a statement Monday, U. leaders said that BYU’s “internationally focused health-education plans complement University of Utah Health’s state-focused mission and offer new opportunities to serve growing health care needs locally and around the world.”
U. President Taylor Randall, a Latter-day Saint, responded quickly to the news as well, stating, “We will work with BYU and church leadership to lay the groundwork for a model collaboration that serves the needs of this state and provides critical health services to countries around the world.”
Together, he said, the schools can help “meet existing and future health care professional shortages.”
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Russell M. Nelson, center, wife Wendy, left, and University of Utah President Taylor Randall stand near the church leader's medical journals at the Church Administration Building in 2023. Nelson donated his medical journals to the U., his alma mater.
For its part, Intermountain Health said in a statement that it “will engage with BYU in exploring and defining what a future relationship might be. Intermountain Health also anticipates continuing its clinical relationship with the University of Utah.”
Questions remain
Many BYU alumni and current employees are cheering the news, some saying a medical school is “long overdue.” Others wonder how it will work and what challenges lie ahead.
Medical schools “are incredibly expensive and if you aren’t encouraging research, it seems like it will be hard to attract top faculty,” Rebecca de Schweinitz, an associate professor of history at BYU, wrote on Facebook. “This also means that the school will miss out on outside funding sources.”
Will the costs of medical education “end up meaning few international and disadvantaged students will be able to attend?” she asked. “Will it mainly become an outlet for upper-class white Mormon men who otherwise wouldn’t get into med school? Will the school have any diversity in its faculty? How will it affect undergraduate majors and programs? Will students increasingly flock to the sciences? Will the med school (through admissions and advising) promote international studies-related majors? Would global women and children’s health be a priority? Would that translate into greater support for global women’s studies? How about Africana studies? How about Native American studies?”
As to money, the global church of 17.2 million members has ample financial resources it could tap. Its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, had stock holdings worth $54.7 billion as of late March in its publicly reported portfolio.
Ronald Larkin, a retired OB-GYN and president of the U.’s medical school alumni association, described the task ahead for BYU as a daunting one, particularly in the absence of an anchoring teaching hospital.
“That’s going to be a huge challenge,” Larkin said, “to make it a really credible and wonderful medical school.”
He also had questions about future class sizes and how the school would attract students interested in addressing the health needs of international communities.
Still, he described the announcement as “exciting,” particularly given an ongoing shortage of doctors.
Meeting the doctor demand
Sam Finlayson, interim dean of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, said in the same news release that the addition of a BYU medical school will help to meet sky-high demand for medical education in the region. His own school regularly receives more than 2,000 applications for just 125 positions each year.
This is all “very exciting news,” Finlayson, who is a Latter-day Saint, added in an email. “In addition to the global setting, we here in Utah are a growing population with growing physician demand, so I expect that the addition of a new medical school at BYU will only improve our situation in Utah.”
The U. has indicated its interest “in collaborating with BYU in medical education,” he said, “and looks forward to exploring possibilities.”
In its release, the U. pointed to its own expansion plans with the expected 2026 completion of a new state-of-the-art home for the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.
The state’s flagship university also is eyeing a regional medical campus in St. George, where students will receive clinical training in partnership with Intermountain Health and Utah Tech University.
These plans for southwestern Utah, the U. said, will be discussed further in the 2025 legislative session.
“In our experience, students add vitality, genuine curiosity and caring to health care settings,” Finlayson said, “so I expect that the presence of even more bright young medical students in Utah will be good for both care providers and patients.”
Religious dogma versus reproductive and gender care
How will the church-sponsored medical school deal, for instance, with the knotty issues of abortion and care for transgender patients?
In fact, there has already been one example of such a conflict.
In 2022, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association scolded BYU for ending its voice therapy services for transgender students. That move went against the group’s “code of ethics.”
Though some medical school educators say these issues arise more frequently during residency or clinical care, there will be much scrutiny on the curriculum.
For its part, the church said the future school would focus on international health issues and humanitarian assistance.
“It’s a necessary part of the transformation from a pioneer church to a global church,” said Cole Capener, a Latter-day Saint attorney in Park City who runs a nonprofit organization for people living with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe. “This is where the church should be allocating resources from its Ensign Peak Advisors fund.”
Tyler Johnson, a Latter-day Saint oncologist who teaches at Stanford Medical School, agrees.
The church is at a place in its history when it can use the “particular gifts we have as a people,” he said, “to bless the world.”
At most medical schools, there is a portion of the curriculum “dedicated to international health,” Johnson said. At BYU’s future school, it is part of the “raison d’etre.”
What if every student who went through BYU’s medical school, for example, were required to do a global health rotation?
If, in time, the school brought international students to train there “and then sent them back to serve in their own countries,” Johnson said, “that could be a really beautiful and powerful idea.”