Phoenix approves $50 million ASU Health Headquarters with dual MD/MS physician-engineer program

Good morning and welcome to the official groundbreaking for the headquarters of ASU Health. To begin today's event, please welcome the executive vice president of ASU Health, Shireen Gabriel. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning. This is such an exciting day. I was telling folks it was kind of a a pinch me moment uh for me. So, it's really exciting to be here.

I'm Shireen Gabriel, as you heard, executive vice president of ASU Health, and it's my privilege and pleasure to welcome all of you here today. So, thank you for being with us uh as we reach another important milestone in the evolution of ASU Health, the groundbreaking, the groundbreaking for construction of the headquarters of our ASU Health building uh right here in downtown Phoenix as part of the Phoenix Bioscience Corp. So this moment represents really so much more than a building.

It represents a long-term commitment to innovation, to collaboration, to improving health outcomes together for communities across Arizona. But before I begin, I want to thank a few people uh who are kind enough to be here with us this morning. You will hear from Governor Hobbes and Mayor Ggo very shortly, but please uh join me now in welcoming them and thanking them for their support. Thank you. Please also recognize and welcome chair of the Arizona Board of Governors, Doug Goodyear.

And uh also from the board of regents, the person who served as chair when ASU health was first announced, Fred Duval, also regions Lee Stein and Greg Brewster are here and uh incoming re regent Dr. Michelle Howard is also here with us. Thank you all. Phoenix City Council members whose support we are extremely grateful for. Uh, Councilwoman Anne O'Brien, Councilwoman Jim Wearing, Councilman Kevin Robinson, and Councilwoman Laura Pastor.

Thank you guys for being here from the Arizona State Legislature. Thank you for joining us this morning. Representative Brian Garcia, Representative Selena Bliss, Representative Kiana Sears, Senator Karen Wernern, Senator Priya Sanderashin, uh, Senator Quanta Cruz. Thank you guys for being here. And from our partners and friends, Honor Health, the primary clinical affiliate for the new John the new Shufeld School of Medicine and Medical Engineering, Dr.

Priya Rada Krishnan, vice president and chief academic officer for honor health and vice dean uh for clinical affairs and graduate medical education at the Shufeld School. Dr. John Neil, EVP, chief physician executive and network officer, and Dr. Dr. Jim Whitfield, senior vice president for strategic partnership and chief transformation officer. Thank you guys for being here. And Dr. John Shufeld for whom our new medical medical and engineering school is named is also with us this morning.

Welcome John. Thank you so much for being here. And finally, please join me. And finally, it's just the names. I've got more to say, so don't get too excited. And finally, please join me in recognizing the deans of the four primary academic components of ASU Health. Uh Dean Holly Lizenby from the Shoufeld School of Medicine, Medical Engineering, Dean Joti Path of the School of Technology for Public Health. Dean Michael Udell of the College of Health Solutions. Yay.

And Dean Judy Khmer, dean of the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Thank you guys. And very, very soon, this will be our new home, the new home for ASU Health. And this new home is already the product of hard work done by so many people who've helped us to get to this moment. The city of Phoenix under the leadership of its past three mayors, Phil Gordon, Greg Stanton, and Kate Ggo, um, past and present, has been preparing a place for us for many years.

Before there was an ASU health, the city made a decision to invest its resources in the future of bioscience and healthcare. A lot has happened since then, including PBC 850 building just to our north here that ASU is a part of. But it was that vision and the city's commitment that started the momentum that brings us to today. From our perspective at ASU, it was city leaders and city voters who were forwardinking and made wise choices in building partnerships and making these investments.

Through their focused and disciplined approach, Phoenix has been preparing a place for ASU Health to do the work we're all poised and prepared to do. And it was action from the state that unlocked all of the potential. Three years ago, this May, under the leadership of Governor Katie Hobbs, the Arizona Board of Regents gave its three universities an assignment as part of an initiative it called Arizona Healthy Tomorrow.

That call for action led our president, sorry, our president, President Michael Crowe to create ASU Health, not just a medical school, an entire healthc care ecosystem for research, for education, for workforce development, producing better outcomes for the people of Arizona, and creating an economic engine for the re region.

It's the professional opportunity of a lifetime for me honestly and for so many of us uh here and and at ASU to bring our experience, our expertise, our commitment to make all of this happen. So if you're here today as part of ASU Health and if you're able, if you would please stand up. Come on guys, just thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership and for making this happen.

And if you're standing, if you would please join me in thanking the governor, the mayor, the city council members in being our partners in this initiative and for the opportunity to transform the health and vitality of our city and our state for generations to come. Thanks. Thank you, Mayor Ggo. Can't thank you enough. Thank you, Governor Hobbs. We would not be here today without your support.

So, let me take just another couple of minutes to give you a sense for what that support means and what you'll find inside the headquarters uh once it's complete. I'll start with the John Shufeld School of Medicine and Medical Engineering. The name of the school actually says more than you may realize. It's a school that will produce physician engineers where graduates in the same four years that uh uh people generally earn an MD will earn both an MD and an MS in medical engineering.

And this is because we understand that in order to provide excellent clinical care and devise solutions for the challenges we all face in health care, the next generation of doctors will need to master not only clinical medicine, but also the principles of technology, AI, and engineering. And in doing so, we hope to produce people like Dr. Dr.

John Shufold, our new med school's founding benefactor and ASU alum, a visionary and a real pro problem solver who truly believes in lifelong learning and entrepreneurial engagement. John has created company after company after company to help bridge gaps and address disparities in healthcare, earning multiple degrees along the way. not only his MD but an MBA from ASU, a JD from ASU and uh not to mention just a couple.

We want graduates from the Shoefeld School, this is a tall order, to model his commitment to service, his embrace of technology, and his entrepreneurial mindset. So that's what we all mean when we say we want to produce more John Shufelts because he's heard me say that now twice in a week. So um the second new school in ASU health's headquarters is the school of technology for public health.

The school of technology for public health combines traditional public health principles and values with again engineering data science and design focused on scalable tech enabled solutions. The school will also provide systems level education with hands-on experience preparing students to design, implement, and scale solutions that improve health outcomes for entire populations and communities, not just one patient at a time.

As I mentioned earlier, these two schools will join our excellent existing ASU health health schools and colleges who already operate in downtown Phoenix, the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, and the College of Health Solutions. As we all know, nurses are the backbone of the health care system and Arizona simply needs more of them. Uh that's what we'll do at the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. will produce them.

And not only that, we'll find ways to use AI and technology to provide more care, more nursing care to more people.

and the College of Health Solutions, which for example leads our food as medicine initiative, as well as producing skilled professionals who will address challenges facing our populations to stay healthy, improving uh not only improving their health but managing chronic disease, working in clinical spaces, labs, folks like uh dieticians, occupational therapists, personal trainers, counselors, and so many other areas of expertise.

So all of this and more will live on or adjacent to this site, adding to the expertise of ASU health and contributing to both workforce health workforce of the future and the impact we hope to make every day as we work together to improve health outcomes. The health observatory also a new entity for ASU health led by Dr. Dave Engeler.

uh also a new part of a new uh part of ASU health, the school of social work and I know we have uh the dean of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions here, Dean Cynthia Leites also contributing to ASU Health and so many others. In fact, ASU Health will tap into virtually every corner of ASU and deep into the community for contributions and partnerships in order to achieve the impact we uh envision. So, welcome. Welcome to the future of health.

It's all going to happen right here because of you and because of our collaborative uh efforts, collective and collaborative efforts and because of your commitment to making a difference in the community we where we all uh live and work and where we serve. So, thank you very much for being here. Mayor of Phoenix since 2019 and a city council member before that since 2014. It is our pleasure to welcome Phoenix Mayor Kate Ggo. Good morning. In Phoenix, we don't wait for the future, we build it.

Today is more than a groundbreaking. It is a pivotal moment in the future of our history, our our city, our health outcomes and job markets. Phoenix has always been a city that that builds builds opportunity, builds solutions, and increasingly builds what's next. And what's next right now is ASU Health. We're so excited for today's investment.

ASU Health gets to learn from what other universities have done, their many mistakes and and some successes, and build the medical investments of the future. Our peer cities wish they could have a school of technology for public health, a health solutions college, the nation's top school for nursing health innovation. We all needed the observatory in 2020. This moment is a result of bold vision and extraordinary leadership.

I'm so glad to be joined today by my colleagues on the city council, Vice Mayor Hajj Washington, council members Anne O'Brien, Laura Pastor, Wearing, and Kevin Robinson. We're joined by our great city manager Ed Zurker. A huge thank you to people at every level of government, including our governor, Katie Hobbs, who shares this priority with us. For us on the Phoenix City Council, it really is a big day.

We voted unanimously two weeks ago to make the single largest investment in the bioscience sector in our city's history. 50 million for us. This is a $50 million investment. I think I get to do this once as mayor and I'm so glad that today's the day.

It includes $12 million approved by our very bright voters who said, "Yes, we want to use our property tax to invest in ASU health, chaired by the vice mayor." And then just last month, we invested a new 38 million from the city's sports facility, bioscience, and tourism fund over 10 years. A huge thank you to Dr. Crow, who has been an incredible partner for us. Arizona's gem.

Our number one university for innovation is a force in solving the biggest problems and helping us be ahead of what's coming. We've done very well in Phoenix with understanding where the economy is going and making the investments we need and and today is absolutely a day where we move forward with that agenda. ASU Health is a model for the future of medicine. Dr. Crow and I have been talking about this for years.

How do we take what we're already good at, our great medical technology, semiconductors, but not rest? Where is the future going and and how can we be ready? And we are so excited to be able to make this investment to to educate, innovate, scale, and serve. We have so many partners and we're so thankful to the generosity and forwardinking philanthropy of of Dr. Shufelt. Thank you.

You share so many of our values including support for our first responders, women's health care and and caring as well as investing in entrepreneurs. We're an entrepreneurial city and and we can't rest with our our success. We're excited about the dual degrees and how the MD and engineering at the medical school will help us move forward as well as the incredible uh degrees from nursing to translational health research. A huge thank you to Dr. Gabriel for your leadership.

It is a pinch me moment for me too today to to our our partner deans to de listenbell deans khmer pathic and Indian leads as well. Thank you. We love talking with you how you can help us address so many of the solution or the challenges we face as a community and and how you're so solution forward. other mayors would be lucky to have this kind of great partnership and just incredible resources.

We have so you mean world-class professionals and and you're willing to consult with us on challenges that that the city faces. So so thank you. It really means so much. This is so much more than a traditional academic program where engineering meets medicine, where data becomes diagnosis and where innovation moves at the speed of need. It is our next major economic and public health engine.

As part of our agreement between ASU and the city, we're going to be able to address some of our priorities as a city council, including public safety and first responder health. Uh we are joined by our our fire chief Mike Duran, as well as Brian Willingham from local 493 who represents our firefighters. You know, more than 130 of our firefighters in in fairly recent times have had occupational cancer diagnosis. Uh we've lost too many of our team.

ASU is going to help us address that and and thank you for your leadership and partnership. I think this could be a national model that'll save firefighter lives far beyond Arizona. This is a priority as well that that is a a Board of Regents priority, one of the very key board of regents grants um to help address occupational cancer and firefighters and and thank you for creating that important program. and and maybe to to thread the two a lot of this program Dr.

Howard and and Kevin Robinson, we had a a big Chinese food summit. Sorry, Dean Udell about the Chinese food. Uh where we talked about how we could work together more closely and it's so exciting to see this moving forward. The br the regents have been really incredible partners for us. So uh regents uh Goodyear, Duval, uh Brewster Stein, thank you for these investments and and a special thank you to to Fred Duval. Arizona Healthy Tomorrow is reaching its promise today.

you did what you said you were going to do. Uh Fred's father was the founding dean for the U of A medical school and how cool that your family legacy extends to today and and you could be with us as we bring this investment to the city of Phoenix and and with your two sons maybe uh Yuma and Flagstaff could also get medical schools. Uh am among the other areas where uh ASU health will help us is women's care.

Councilman O'Brien, Councilwoman Pastor and I have have talked about women's healthcare needs some disrupting and uh we are very excited to see how health innovation and our nurses I my sense is they got a lot of solutions that we got to bring to market and and that uh the school that uh we will be able to do that as well as new medical devices from maternal health to menopause they haven't got the right amount of attention Dr.

Crow and I have talked about so often when you're doing medical devices, it seems to be for 30-year-old men. And a lot of us have different challenges that are not 30-year-old men challenges. So, we're ready to take that on. And and we think in addition to making life better and healthier for our residents, that will also be creating the companies of the future and and great jobs in our community. So, u a huge thank you.

We have the the team from Arizona FEM which is trying to help women focus businesses and technology um us be a leader in this area including uh Mitsy Crockover who is with us and we're helping founders get from funding to really delivery. So a lot of cool things happening here. This type of agreement between a city and a university with focuses such as women's health is a first of a kind. But I I'm guessing it won't be the last if if it's as successful as I guess it will be.

I want to thank our partners at the state legislature as well for for your support and and work together. This really is an Arizona win and we're so thank you including there's some se democrats who are very involved in in the funding that lets us move forward here today. Uh we're excited about the the building as well.

You know, as a mayor, you care about your downtown and the vice mayor and I represent this area and want gorgeous architecture and a sustainable first-in-class high techch building where it will make sense for the connectivity we need for AI. So, thank you to DFDG and the team at McCarthy. We're so excited you are on the case for us.

We're looking forward to making sure that we build on the excellence already happening in downtown Phoenix from nationally recognized programs at the Sandro de Oconor College of Law, Advancing Health, Law and Policy to the incredible ecosystem with the Phoenix Bioscience Corps, Wexford, and more. We're going to move discovery from lab to life. Imagine the future taking shape. A student learns to code and diagnose in the same classroom.

A startup can move from concept to clinical application within blocks. A patient benefits from precision medicine powered by engineering. Phoenix is a city that commits fully to building the workforce, infrastructure, and partnerships that make it all possible. We're already the number one city for startup startups and one of the fastest growing bioinnovation hubs in the country. But we are not resting.

With ASU Health, we're accelerating that momentum, training the professionals of the future, advancing discovery, and ensuring that we deliver innovation for every resident, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Thank you to everyone who's involved in today's extraordinary milestone. Vice Mayor of Phoenix and City Council member in whose district the ASU Health Headquarters will be Kesha Hajj Washington. Good morning. We can do better than that. Good morning. Good morning.

That's much better. We are here to celebrate and we should have a the right attitude. So, I'm grateful to start us off with that. Good morning. It's my honor to be here with each and every one of you today. As mentioned, I am Vice Mayor Kesha Haj Washington, and I have the honor and privilege of representing District 8 where we are right now. And it's especially meaningful for me because this project is right here in our district.

It is on the Phoenix Bioscience Corps C campus, which is not only a point of pride for the city of Phoenix, but it's a point of pride for our state. And I think it's a point of pride also for our nation. I have the opportunity to speak with other elected officials, especially I went to NLC a few weeks ago and many of them are grappling with exactly what we are solving here. They are trying to figure out how to deal with the health disparities in their community. And I'm like just look at us.

We are doing it. So I am especially proud to have led the efforts around the 2023 GOB bond program which helped make this possible. It is a project as a mayor mentioned that our voters had in this is a project kind of projects our voters had in mind when they made that investment and I want to thank them again for their overwhelming support. We would not be able to do this without the voters of Phoenix. Today for me is also more than just a building.

It is about building a stronger, healthier future for the people we serve. These headquarters represent the full vision of ASU health. A place where disciplines come together to solve real challenges in healthcare. This isn't just one school. It's a connected system designed to improve how we educate, innovate, and care for people. More than 20 years ago, I was a student at ASU at the Sandro Day Connor College of Law, and I took public health law.

And this is exactly the type of program we envisioned. So as a proud Sundevil, I know that ASU excels in every aspect of education and I am confident that ASU Health would will exceed our expectations and our metrics of success. This facility, as you've heard, will be home to the John Shufeld School of Medicine and Advanced Medical Engineering, the School of Technology for Public Health, the Edson College of um nursing and health innovation, and the College of Health Solutions.

Each of these play a critical role. Together, they create something truly impactful for our communities to enhance the future of medicine, engineering, and public health. There's also an investment in people. creating opportunities, improving outcomes, and building a healthier, more resilient community. As part of this project, we will prepare a workforce that reflects the needs of our residents. We will increase access to workforce training. We will conduct cuttingedge research.

We will create new pathways into highquality careers in healthcare and biosciences. And we will build on the momentum of the Phoenix Bioscience Corps. I say we because this is a collective effort and I am proud of the role that we have played in getting this project to this point. I'm excited to see what this means for the future of District 8 and the city of Phoenix. One of the benefits of following our very thorough mayor is I don't get to have to name as many people.

But I too want to thank Governor Hobbs. I also want to thank Mayor Ggo for not only spareheadedness, but giving me the opportunity to lead the Go Bond campaign. I want to thank in her absence Congresswoman Yasiman Ansar. I know her office is here. I also want to thank you, President Crowe, for your vision and for all of the things that you have done to move our community forward. To the Arizona Board of Regents, thank you. Thank you for your leadership, your guidance, and your vision.

And I want to say thank you to all of our partners who have helped make this vision a reality. So, today we break ground. Tomorrow we deliver results for our community. And so, I thank you and say congratulations again to everyone involved. And now, please welcome the 24th governor of the state of Arizona and a graduate of Arizona State University where she earned a master's of social work, Katie Hobbs. Good morning everyone. I am thrilled to join you all for this very exciting groundbreaking.

As you heard from Dr. Gabriel, nearly three years ago, we launched a healthy tomorrow. The a healthy tomorrow initiative. This is a bold step forward to deliver quality health care to Arizonans across the state and uh I have to thank the regions for your leadership and vision in helping launch this initiative. Uh it recognizes the healthcare workforce gap um that that we have.

Uh we knew that we needed to invest in attracting and retaining qualified professionals and um this is a solution that all three universities are playing a role in. President Crowe, of course, was excited to jump in for ASU's part, and it made sense. It makes sense for them to take on a role with innovation at its core.

ASU Health, as you've already heard from speakers previous to me, has a bold vision to reinvent health care for the better by transforming healthcare delivery, embracing technology as a way to improve health care, and growing at a scale that will be impactful in improving healthcare access.

I'm proud that we've been able to make multiple investments to support the Aalthy Tomorrow initiative and ASU Health, most notably in last year's budget, working to expand bonding capacity, uh, which is a significant part of this building, uh, and also a testament to what we can do when we work together to find solutions for, uh, for Arizona. We have also invested uh state and federal funding to help support ASU health.

And uh while our budget is a little tighter this year, there is more work to be done in the future to support the ongoing operations of ASU Health. And I'm looking forward to uh working on that through the work of ASU Health. ASU is committed to making transformational change at scale to improve the health outcomes of Arizonans.

And they're doing this through a number of initiatives, including a first for the state, a medical school focused on creating physicians who are specialists in medicine, engineering, technology, and humanities. ASU Health is also creating one of the first technology and public health schools in the nation that will train future public health practitioners in both technology and public health.

They have a goal to triple the number of nurses educated by ASU and to attract more doctors into the state with upskilling opportunities and they will help the state grow our capacity to close healthcare workforce gaps and bring quality health care to Arizonans across the state. My workforce cabinet and talent ready a initiative identified healthcare workforce as the state's largest workforce need with more than 76,000 new workers needed by 2030.

Our state agency partners are working to design strategies that meet this goal. But what's evident is that will it will take all of us working together to meet this need including our universities, community colleges, CTE programs, and our hospital and clinical partners. And we are so fortunate to have so many partners with us who share our dedication to making sure that Arizona is a healthier place. Every seat in this school is a patient who gets seen.

Every diploma here is a workforce gap that gets a little bit smaller. Every investment we make today is a healthier Arizona tomorrow. Together, we are strengthening communities and helping more people realize the Arizona promise. Thank you to Dr. Crowe, Dr. Gabriel, and the board of regions for your vision for ASU Health. Thank you also, Mayor Ggo, and Vice Mayor Haj Washington for your investment and partnership.

ASU Health is poised to be a landmark in the Phoenix Bioscience Corps and I can't wait to see what is accomplished here. Thank you. The architect of the new American University and ASU Health, Arizona State University region's distinguished president, Michael M. Crowe. Well, it's nice to see everyone here and have an opportunity to get this thing kicked off. Let me uh not just add to all the thank yous. I mean, we're here because we have leadership in Arizona.

We have leadership at the state level. leadership at the city. There's uh legislators who are here that helped the speed bonds, the city council, the vice mayor, others, the border regents who gave us a charge. It really is us responding to what the people's elected leaders ask us to do. And here's what they say. We're not satisfied with where Arizona is. We're not satisfied with the health outcomes in Arizona.

We're not satisfied with how we're helping all of the people of Arizona to move their life forward. Then we need you, the people over there at the university with your pointy heads and your uh strange looking ways that you do things and all these privileges that we give you over there at that school. We need you to step up. We need you to do what your assignment is, which is to think about the future. The mayor mentioned future, future, future.

Our job is that we at the university are at the edge of the future. We're not the only ones there, but we have a principal job. We're producing the latest, best, state-of-the-art graduates in hundreds and hundreds of subjects. We're producing master learners who have the ability to go forward to make things happen. We're supposed to sit back and assess what can we do better. And here's an area where we haven't done as well as we need to have done. And this is healthcare.

At most schools, UCLA, they have a thing called UCLA Health. It's a fantastic, unbelievable Ronald Reagan hospital with clinics all over Southern California. It's an unbelievable research institution. It's achieving unbelievable things. The same with UC San Diego, the same with UC San Francisco, the same with maybe 50 or 60 or 70 other centers like that called something something health. We decided not to follow that route at all.

And I want to make sure at this meeting that everybody understands what we're doing. We're calling it ASU Health because that's the objective, not a thing. It's a very, very different model. The state already has two great campuses of a stateup supported medical school at the University of Arizona, one of which is just down the street. The state already has emerging, unbelievably fastm moving and innovative medical centers, hospitals throughout the community at every possible level.

We already have all of these things. All of those things are necessary but insufficient. Here's the problem. We live in a country that is wealthy beyond everything you can possibly imagine. The per capita average income, per capita GDP, gross domestic product. You take the power of the American economy and divide it by the number of people living here and it's almost $90,000. On the planet, it's around $10,000.

Now, you would think with that wealth spread out across the entire population, we would have the most unbelievably effective health care system that human beings have ever wrought. Oh, contr. Here's what we have. We're spending 2.5 times almost two and a half times per capita the money on health care as any other country in the world. And our results are not in the top 25.

I come from a family with many, many metabolic disease issues and the drugs for some of these disease issues, at least until recently, were costing $1,600 a month. Well, only about 3% of the population can afford $1600 a month with their cash. And only certain insurance companies, only about 10% of the insurance companies were covering these costs. And so here we have this fantastic discovery, these new drugs that unfortunately will drive you into bankruptcy.

And so what we have is a system that costs so much that it's lost control with poor results. This is really hard for Americans to understand. People think we have these poor results because, well, some people don't live right. We have these poor results because a lot of people are stupid. Oh, if only we could fix those things. You can fix what people understand. You can educate people to help make better choices.

We do not produce the kinds of people and the kinds of results that we need to have a truly impactful outcome on health outcomes. Now, narrow those health outcomes down to the United States. I heard something just the other day on the news. It it literally I I don't know. I I was like shaking. I was so upset. They said, "Well, the American economy is going to be saved by health care.

There's going to be more jobs in healthcare, and that's how we're going to keep the economy moving forward." I hope not. I hope that the American economy is not going to be saved by healthcare. We need jobs of people making things and people creating things and people advancing learning and advancing creativity and making all these things happen. And then we need to take care of them and their family in a healthy way at the lowest possible cost.

So short story about 15 years ago the editor of a magazine that only 10 people in this room will know what it is. It's called Nature Magazine. It's the most read scientific magazine on the planet. The editor calls me up and says, "Michael, I need you to critique the National Institutes of Health and their desire to build a new institute, a 26th or 27th, I don't remember it was institute." I said, "Easy. How long do I have? You got two weeks." Well, I have another job.

You know, I'm the I'm the president of this like uh university in this wild state called Arizona. It consumes a lot of energy. So, I wrote this article. It got published on the front page of the Sunday paper of the Boston Globe. And it got published as a main article in Nature Magazine. Here's what I said. We don't need 27 institutes in the National Institute of Health. We need to reconceptualize the design. We need three institutes.

One institute focused on knowing everything there is to know to help human beings to be healthier, including most importantly about their behavior, which is linked to many of the diseases. Secondly, we need an institute that's focused on producing results that everyone will have access to, affordable, usable, deployable in rural communities and Native American communities and communities spread out across the entire country because that's not what we build.

And third, we need an institute devoted to one thing, lowering the cost of the delivery of healthcare to the people of the United States. I got 6,500 hate email messages from that. One of them said, since they knew I lived in Arizona and I'd moved here from New York City, they said, 'You must be the illegitimate son of John McCain. And what I said back was, "My mother never met him." That is literally what I wrote back. This idea, ASU Health, is that idea.

How do you not just keep doing what we're doing? How do you We already have great institutions. This is not in lie of the things that we already have. This is in addition to the things that we already have. How do we mix it up here in Arizona? How do we build ASU health with a new kind of medical school that John, you really are the Hollywood Central casting prototype for this medical school? Let's let's get a guy. He's still taking a degree from ASU now. Did you finish it this semester?

Two more classes. So what I mean by that is master learner, always learning, always moving forward, master entrepreneur, always inventing, doing things differently. Master servant, a wealthy guy still working in emergency rooms. Why do you do that? He doesn't even have to work, but he does all the time. That's the kind of people we want to produce. That's what this medical school is about. But we don't want to run a major medical center.

We don't want to add to the basic structure of the way things are. We want to cause trouble. Here's the trouble we're already causing. Well, what is a medical engineer? Well, think Star Trek. Nobody even laughed at that one smile back then. So, how do you produce these super super physicians? They might not have single patients. They might have 50,000 patients. They might think do things in different different ways. Our our technology for public health. It's not about just finding a solution.

is about finding a solution that people can use and not some people and not rich people, everyone. How do we make that work? So, what we've done here is the board has given us the license. I'm not looking at them when I say this. To jump off the cliff, now to jump off the cliff, I remember from my military training that you have to do this. You have to cross your legs for certain reasons. Put your head down and hold your nose. Well, with this kickoff of this building, we're hitting the water.

And this building is not a medical school. This building is not a public health school. This building is a place I see our honor partners here who have invested in this medical school and are the clinical partners that we have for this medical school. But they know that we're going to be partners with everyone and they want us to be partners with everyone. This is going to be a center hub in downtown Phoenix where all of these things that we've heard about this morning can be talked about.

new innovations, new ways to accelerate women's health, new ways to educate people, new ways to do things in uh uh startup companies, spinout companies, new kinds of clinics, new kinds of this. That's what's needed. This is the perfect place, the Phoenix Bioscience Corps. We've got the perfect partners. We have allies. We've got these fantastic, you know, a team deans that are just unbelievable driving our institution forward, making things happen.

And so whatever we're doing is meant to find a way where Arizona's health outcomes writ large. That's how we want to be measured. Don't tell us how many doctors we produced or how many nurses we produced only or how many things we solved. Did we increase Arizona's health? Did we lower health care access costs? Did we produce a better outcome for the state of Arizona? That's what we call over there, improving health outcomes for everyone. That's what we're here to do.

We're in charge of trying to put some put some, you know, linebackers into the future to make some things happen. This is really a joint project. Everybody's involved in this and we are very excited to make this happen. Thank you very much. This concludes our program. Please join us outside the tent for the official groundbreaking of the ASU Health Headquarters.