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This West Valley City med student hopes the U.’s new hospital will be more than just conveniently located

As a first-generation college student, Dennis Menjivar is almost done with his first year of medical school. He said he hopes to help other students with similar interests.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) University of Utah medical student Dennis Menjivar, on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

Dennis Menjivar is all too familiar with the difficulties West Valley City residents face to find medical care.

Even though his hometown holds Utah’s second-largest population, the University of Utah reports that it only contains 1 out of every 10 hospital beds in Salt Lake County. And even though several hospitals are within a 30-minute drive, Menjivar — a first-year medical student — said that trip becomes much longer in the eyes of many who call West Valley home.

The journey, he said, is fraught with the complexities of navigating the medical world, and often blocked by language barriers. People like his parents, who came to the United States from El Salvador in the late ‘90s, struggle to voice their health concerns, he said.

Menjivar said he hopes a new University of Utah hospital and health care campus, which broke ground in West Valley City on Friday, can “melt away” some of the obstacles some people on the west side face to access health care.

[Read more from Friday’s groundbreaking and the “huge step” this $855 million campus will provide in accessible health care.]

Beyond shortening patients’ drives, Menjivar said he sees value in the staffing, education and representation opportunities the hospital can offer.

“A hospital is supposed to reflect the community,” Menjivar said. “You have a place that’s staffed by people who look like your population, who talk like your population, who come from the same background as the people in it. … All of a sudden, you’re going to enter somewhere that feels a little bit more like home.”

(University of Utah) Rendering shows the main entryway of University of Utah's future hospital in West Valley City. The facility will host over 50 health care specialties and services, and U. expects it to host over 426,000 patient visits annually.

Menjivar said he has been around the health care industry for most of his life. When he was about five years old, he said he remembers spending time at the Huntsman Cancer Institute after his grandfather was diagnosed.

When his grandfather died, Menjivar said he watched his father cry at the news. “That, I think, has driven a lot more of my career choices than I would have initially realized,” he said.

In middle school, he said someone asked him what he wanted to be, and, thinking it would sound like a good response, he told them he wanted to become a doctor.

He grew more serious when he talked about the possibility with his dad, who he said told him, “that’s the same thing I would have wanted to do had I had the opportunity, had things been a little bit different.”

In high school, Menjivar said he tested his interest by taking courses like medical terminology and anatomy.

“I loved it,” he said. “I started getting certifications.”

His senior year of high school, he said he learned about the U.’s tuition reduction programs for students who work as full-time employees. So he soon got a job with the university as a medical assistant, which also fulfilled early clinical exposure requirements and has allowed him to work with various doctors. Those doctors, he said, took him under their wing and supported his med-school ambitions.

As a Spanish medical interpreter, he said he would help west-side patients who reminded him of his parents, and further realized the importance of helping underserved communities as someone who could share their culture and gain their trust.

Menjivar, who is a few weeks shy of completing his first year of medical school, said he recognizes another group of underserved people the new hospital can help: Students, like himself.

Before graduating Granger High School, he said several people told him “at Granger, people don’t really become doctors,” and he had to carve almost every step of his path.

Then, he faced premed requirements and his undergraduate degree as a first-generation college student. Later, when he worked to get into medical school, he said he had no family members in the industry who could help him get a foot in the door. And without working for the U. and utilizing the tuition reduction program, he said there was no way he could have paid for college without running up debts.

“The odds are stacked against you from the moment you start school, and unless you’re very committed to essentially breaking out of that, then you’re just going to fall right into the same pattern where, ‘Oh, I graduated, now I’ll just pick up a job and that’ll be that. Forget higher education, forget everything else,’” he said. “My biggest hope is that I can change that attitude, or help to change it.”

The new hospital will be “literally down the street from Granger,” he said, a direct path he hopes can help students connect to the many career options in medicine.

“I don’t think the university’s job is done just because a hospital is there,” he said. “I don’t think they think that, either, because if they’re putting a hospital here, that means that they’re committed to the community, and they want to help it thrive.”

Lisa Eccles, the president and chief operating officer of the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, said the organization thought about the 2,000 jobs her foundation believes the hospital can create before giving the U. $75 million in March to make the facility a reality.

(University of Utah) Rendering of the University of Utah's planned hospital in West Valley. The 22-acre site is located at 3750 S. 5600 West in West Valley City, and is set to include retail, a specialty pharmacy, a café and other community gathering spaces.

The decision, she said, was not a simple one, but when U. President Taylor Randall invited her, her siblings and her father into his office to tell them about the project that would result in the first U. hospital away from campus, she said they were intrigued.

The family first donated to the U.’s medical school in 1965, when the U. says Spencer S. Eccles helped fund its medical library for the U’s medical library. Decades and myriad donations later, Lisa Eccles explained how they saw an opportunity to help extend the university’s reach to underserved areas of the valley.

“They wanted to reach out to a population whose health disparities really got his attention and actually has been on my mind and our family’s mind for some period of time,” she said.

According to the U., West Valley City residents face a life expectancy 10 years less than their east-side peers. In addition, the U. says people in West Valley City see nearly twice the number of deaths related to heart disease, have a 44% higher rate of diabetes and a 38% greater prevalence of stroke.

Through the new hospital’s increased accessibility to health care — as well as through community classes to be offered at the facility — Lisa said it’s “a catalyst for better health, new careers and economic vitality.”

And many community members near the future hospital’s site share that excitement, according to Shawna Mills, the neighborhood’s liaison with the U.

The hospital will sit adjacent to her backyard, and when she first learned about the project, she was concerned.

Not only would it change the green space community members were used to having around their homes, but she worried a hospital would feel invasive.

“A hospital brings the traffic, the noise,” she remembers thinking. “But we’ve had a few years to go through the change.”

Now, after years of meetings and discussions with U. officials involved in the project, she said she believes the community is “very lucky to get this hospital.”

She said she’s had to drive her father with health concerns to a hospital on the east side of the valley “more times than I care to tell you,” sometimes even four days a week. When one of her elderly neighbors needed to see an allergist, Mills realized that the woman had no idea how to find the specialist she needed and make an appointment.

“There is such a need here for health care,” she said. “For people in the community to see a hospital here and to know they can go get care there, I think that is huge.”

(University of Utah) Rending of the future West Valley hospital shows it from the southwest. The University of Utah plans for the building to open in late 2028, with inpatient rooms opening about a year later.

As for Menjivar, he said he looks forward to when he is able to graduate medical school and give back to his community through opportunities he sees in the hospital.

“I would love to be able to work with my population directly,” he said. “You never forget where you came from. You don’t forget those roots.”