The mood was celebratory, emotional and most of all hopeful May 15, when Santa Clara University and Sutter Health announced their new partnership to build the first new California medical school in a century, the Mark and Mary Stevens School of Medicine. The school will be next door to Sutter’s West Santa Clara medical center — and Sutter’s future hospital — and about 5 miles from SCU’s campus.

“It’s not every day that you get to do something that hasn’t been done in more than a hundred years,” said Sutter President and CEO Warner Thomas. “It’s pretty incredible. What better place to have a medical school than on a new flagship campus in the heart of Silicon Valley, than is the home of where AI is changing the world.”

The school was made possible by a $175 million donation from venture capitalist Mark Stevens and his wife Mary, noted education philanthropists who have pledged to give away a large part of their fortune.

The Stevens’ past donations to SCU include nearly $40 million for athletics facilities and programs, the Locatelli Student Activity Center, and an endowed scholarship. Their support of Sutter Health includes contributions to expand cancer care and a mental health app for teens and young adults.

Integrated medical education is the animating idea behind the partnership between the medical group and the university: Integration with other SCU education programs, integration with clinical practice, and, recognizing the growing importance of AI in medical care, integration with SCU’s Cunningham Shoquist Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence and Human Potential.

SCU president Julie Sullivan stressed the medical school’s role in the university’s mission.

“The partnership between Sutter Health and Santa Clara University is among the first of its kind,” she said, “bringing together a nationally recognized healthcare system and a leading national Jesuit Catholic University. Our new partnership will prepare doctors for the healthcare future that’s unfolding, not the one that has passed.”

The school has been in the making since 2013, when SCU included it in the university’s long-term strategic plan.

“Our current healthcare system, as good as it is, is not adequately prepared to serve the needs of our country’s growing, aging, and multicultural population,” Sullivan said. “At the same time, artificial intelligence and other technological advances are penetrating the healthcare sector faster and deeper than any other sector in our economy.”

The U.S. needs 100,000 more physicians, and California faces a shortage of roughly 37,000 over the next five to seven years.

“Sixty percent of Californians that go to medical school leave the state,” said Thomas. “The likelihood that those folks are coming back to practice is very low, because 70% of physicians stay within 70 miles of where they finish their training. That’s why we started in graduate medical education.”

SCU public health student Setayesh Assadzadeh, who plans to become an MD, described how caring for her father during the COVID pandemic led her to think about healthcare as care of a whole person — not just administering medical treatment.

“When my dad became ill, I stepped into a caregiving role and had to navigate a healthcare system I didn’t fully understand,” she said. “I saw how quickly responsibilities shift; how overwhelming care can become both for the patient and for the entire family. That experience is what drew me to study public health at Santa Clara University. I learned that health is not just shaped by biology, but by social drivers, by whether care fits into people’s everyday lives.”

That perspective deepened during an internship at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“In the pediatric ICU, I saw a lot of children relying on feeding tubes,” she said. “I kept coming back to one question: What happens to those kids when they go home? I learned that many families were expected to continue care in ways that didn’t always fit into their daily lives.”

The experience led Assadzadeh to think about designing care that could better support patients after they left the hospital — and to develop a concept for a pediatric feeding device.

“I realized that medicine isn’t just about knowledge,” she said. “It’s about building solutions that work in real life. As Santa Clara and Sutter Health build this future medical school, I’m excited about the possibility of contributing to a medical community that values innovation, compassion and human connection. Because that’s the kind of physician I want to become.”

Carolyn Schuk can be reached at carolyn@santaclaraweekly.com.

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