A fitting legacy
By taking on this mission, Rosenthal and his staff are following an example set by the Zakim Center's namesake.
In his position as New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Lenny Zakim fought racial, religious, and gender-related bigotry with a tireless passion that won him friends from every walk of life. When the 41-year-old Newton, Mass., resident was diagnosed in 1994 with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, he worried that the determination he brought to his work would be of little use as a Dana-Farber patient.
Standing before a painting of Lenny Zakim are Zakim Center staff members (front, left to right) Anne Doherty, project coordinator; Cynthia Medeiros, LICSW, administrative director; Anne Chiavacci, RD, MS, clinical dietitian; and (back, left to right) Ellen Highfield, LicAc, acupuncturist; Tony Meyer, PsyD, co-chair, research committee; and Carmen Lopez, administrative assistant.
Then, while preparing for a bone marrow transplant, he met David Eisenberg, MD, director of the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies at Harvard Medical School, which in August 2001 released a study that showed such therapies are being used in greater numbers by people of all ages and demographic groups. A leading authority on the subject, Eisenberg told Zakim about many physical, spiritual, and nutritional treatments. Suddenly, Zakim saw the opportunity to advocate for change in a new arena: his own life.
"I set out almost immediately on a path of doing a variety of complementary therapies, and they put me in the best physical shape I had been in since I played high-school football," Zakim explains in a video produced by the Zakim Center and available to patients. His regimen included acupuncture, massage, meditation, music therapy, and diet changes; convinced others could benefit from similar therapies, he began advocating for a program devoted to such treatments. After he met Medeiros, DFCI's director of Patient and Family Support Services, the pair convened a meeting to discuss the idea with fellow staff and patients.
"I booked a small room," Medeiros recalls, "and 60 or 70 people showed up. They were overflowing into the halls, and Lenny and I just looked at each other and said, 'My God.' The energy was unbelievable, and that was the beginning of the Complementary Therapies Task Force."
"Part of our role at Dana-Farber must be to further understanding and acceptance of these therapies."
— David Rosenthal, MD, Zakim Center medical director
With Medeiros and Zakim serving as co-chairs, the task force broke into committees devoted to clinical work, research, and education. A series of educational programs and monthly lectures was held in 1997-98 for patients, families, and staff, and the Institute received a grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation of New York City to research the benefits of Qigong — an ancient Chinese relaxation technique thought to improve immune-system functions. Led by Paul Richardson, MD, of DFCI's Adult Oncology Department, the study proposed to enroll one group of cancer patients in a Qigong program and another in a program of aerobic exercise to see which group achieved a greater improvement in health.
Over time, more and more people, including Dana-Farber senior leadership, embraced the idea of a center. "All of this helped," Medeiros says, "but what really got us off the ground was Lenny himself. He was often invited to speak at Institute events about living with cancer and the care he received here. While he always spoke very positively about the Institute, he never missed a chance to say, 'The one thing Dana-Farber is missing is a program devoted to complementary therapy.'"
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