Tempe-based Arizona State University has selected Phoenix for headquarters of ASU Health, a new 'learning health ecosystem' that includes a medical school and expanded alliance with Mayo Clinic.
The university announced the ASU Health headquarters Oct. 19, noting that the enterprise includes schools of medicine and public health technology, which will be built at a location to be determined in downtown Phoenix. ASU's Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and its College of Health Solutions are already part of the university's Phoenix campus.
The new ASU School of Medicine and Advanced Medical Engineering integrates clinical medicine with biomedical science and engineering. ASU did not specify class size of the new school.
"The ASU School of Medicine will produce a new kind of doctor who is technologically enhanced by every tool imaginable and able to work across entire communities, not just with individual patients," University President Michael Crow, PhD, said. "It also means Phoenix will leap to the leading edge of physician development, physician-oriented research and public health-oriented research."
ASU's affiliation with Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, known as the Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care, will expand under the new enterprise with facilities located near Mayo Clinic's north Phoenix campus and hospital. Mayo Clinic has operated its own school of medicine since 2017 in Scottsdale.
ASU Health was announced this spring in response to requests from the Arizona Board of Regents to expand medical education in Arizona. Fred DuVal, chair elect of the board, described ASU Health as "part of the most aggressive and comprehensive health care plan in Arizona's history."
In 2021, Arizona ranked 31st in the nation for active physicians per 100,000 people, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.