November 22, 2005
Zakim Center celebrates five years of helping heal 'the whole
person'
Ralph Snyderman's Lenny Lecture talk focused on the changing patient-caregiver relationship
On what would have been its namesake's 52nd birthday, the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies last week celebrated its first five years at Dana-Farber with events that showed his vision of patient care is becoming a reality.
During the annual "Lenny Lecture" held Nov. 17 before an overflow crowd in the Smith Family Room that included Zakim's widow, parents, and one of his daughters, Duke University Chancellor Emeritus Ralph Snyderman, MD, spoke passionately to staff, patients, and family members about the important role integrated therapies can play in treating cancer and other illnesses.
Then, moving on to an Integrative Medicine Fair in Smith 308-309, attendees were able to try ear acupuncture, engage in mini-massage therapy and Qigong sessions, and learn about other Zakim Center offerings. Fourteen scientific posters to view detailing completed and current research projects by Zakim staff and their DFCI colleagues, touching on everything from the effect of acupuncture on quality of life for advanced cancer patients to the impact music therapy can have on women with metastatic breast cancer.
"It's been an incredible five years of growth," Zakim Center Medical Director David S. Rosenthal, MD, said at a dinner concluding the festivities. "The Institute leadership has allowed us to integrate complementary care alongside conventional care, and as a result of our tremendous progress in the field — both in clinical services and research within the cancer spectrum — Dana-Farber has become one of the three lead organizations to help found a new Society for Integrative Oncology. We're continuing to gain momentum."
During his Lenny Lecture presentation, Snyderman sated his belief that modern medicine requires a new model for patient-caregiver relationships, a form of "strategic healthcare planning" in which the two groups are partners and patients assume more responsibility for maintaining their health. The universal acceptance of integrative medicine, or, as he calls it the "re-integration" of medicine, will play a key role in this new paradigm.
"Whether it's cancer or anything else, we need to go beyond an approach of 'find it and fix it' to identifying risk and intervening early," said Snyderman, who was also dean of the School of Medicine at Duke from 1989-2004 and developed the Duke University Health System, one of the nation's most successful integrated academic health systems. "This is where I think integrative medicine becomes very important, as a support system to help individuals achieve their own health goals and to maximize any therapy appropriate for them."
A center focused on integrative (or complementary) therapies at Dana-Farber was the dream of DFCI patient Lenny Zakim, who embraced such offerings in the final year of his battle with multiple myeloma and believed all patients should have access to them. Two years after he and Cynthia Meideros, LICSW, held the first meeting of the Complementary Therapy Task Force — and 10 months after he died — the Zakim Center opened here in the fall of 2000.
With Medeiros serving as its executive director, the center has become a leader in the field, offering adult and pediatric patients a growing number of therapy options while conducting a wide range of research and education projects. Patient volume has climbed from 750 visits in that first year to more than 3,500 in 2005, and the center's treatment space has expanded accordingly.
"What has been special and unique about my [breast cancer] treatment at Dana-Farber and at the Zakim Center is their willingness to look at the whole person, and to help that person heal —body, mind, and spirit," said dinner speaker Barbara Schoeman, who learned to meditate and received nutritional advice thanks to center staff. "Integrating old knowledge with new knowledge, ancient methods with current science, makes the Zakim Center a unique place."
