TIME magazine has released its TIME100 Health list for 2025, naming 100 people “who are most influential in the world of health right now”—and two North Texas women made the list.
The list highlights the impact, innovation, and achievement of leaders dedicating to creating tangible, credible change for a healthier population.
To create the list, TIME’s health correspondents and editors, led by Emma Barker Bonomo and Mandy Oaklander and with guidance of Dr. David Agus and Arianna Huffington, “spent months consulting sources and experts around the world. The result is a community of leaders—scientists, doctors, advocates, educators, and policy-makers, among others—who are changing the health of the world,” the publication said.
The two North Texas TIME100 Health honorees are Dallas-based Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, and Fort Worth-based Walmart heiress Alice Walton, a noted art curator and founder of the holistic-health focused Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Another honoree with local ties, billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman Melinda French Gates, is based in Seattle, but was born and raised in Dallas. She attended St. Monica Catholic School and Ursuline Academy in Dallas before pursuing higher education at Duke University.
Here is more on the two local honorees, and why they were selected:
Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association
Brown has served as CEO of the American Heart Association since 2008. Under her leadership, it’s become a global force transforming the way the world understands, treats and prevents heart disease and stroke, the No.1 and No. 2 causes of death worldwide. “A relentless advocate for patients, families and caregivers, Brown has accelerated the association’s lifesaving research, science, and innovation to empower people to live longer, healthier lives,” the association said.
To help address the historic lack of investment in women’s health—only 2% of health care venture funding in 2023 was devoted to women’s health, for instance—Brown built on the association’s Go Red for Women initiative by launching a $75 million Go Red for Women Venture Fund in 2024. The fund supports companies that are translating evidence-based science into products and services that drive better heart and brain health outcomes for women.
Brown is also the driving force behind the association’s Nation of Lifesavers initiative, which aims to double survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest by 2030, along with other programs like Health Care by Food.
“It’s a tremendous honor to receive this recognition from TIME and to be mentioned alongside innovators also working to change the future of health in communities around the world,” Brown said in a statement. “This recognition is a tribute to our dedicated volunteers, patients, supporters and staff who champion the American Heart Association’s lifesaving work—advancing health and hope for everyone, everywhere.”
“I predict that care will change in the not distant future because of the funding that we’ve been able to provide and the real dedication of these scientists,” Brown told TIME.
Alice Walton, founder of the Alice Walton School of Medicine
The only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, Alice Walton is the world’s richest woman—and she’s focused her resources around a compelling cause that affects everyone: health.
After she experienced a series of hospital visits to treat a bone infection from a car accident, she realized the U.S. health care system is “broken,” she told TIME—from disparate health services across the country to skewed financial incentives that drive hospitals toward a test-and-procedure approach, which doesn’t always provide ideal outcomes.
In response, she founded the Alice Walton School of Medicine, which will open in Bentonville, Arkansas, this July. The school will train doctors with “an innovative approach that addresses the whole patient, including behaviors and lifestyle as well as their physical symptoms,” TIME wrote.
“Doctors are not trained in nutrition and preventive care because they are not paid to do it,” Walton told TIME. “The health system and medical schools are just reacting to what the system incentivizes.”
“I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors training on, number one, how to keep patients healthy, and, number two, the financial incentives in the system and what they should be so we can move toward value-based payments,” Walton added.
The school is close to the Bridges Museum of American Art, which Walton opened in 2011 as a way share her celebrated art collection with the general public. Not surprisingly, a curated selection of art will be gracing the walls of her new holistic-health medical school as well.
To see the full TIME100 Health list for 2025, go here.
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