During Commencement on Sunday, June 2, UMass Chan will award honorary degrees to two pioneering academic health scientists: James Dalen, MD, MPH, a founding UMass Chan faculty member and champion of integrated medicine as an academic field; and former MIT president Susan Hockfield, PhD, the first life-scientist to lead the prestigious institution. Both honorary degree recipients will speak briefly during the ceremony.
James Dalen: founding faculty member
Cardiologist James Eugene Dalen, MD, MPH, is known to long-time UMass Chan community members as a founding faculty member, joining the Medical School in 1975 as the first chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. He later became chair of the Department of Medicine and eventually interim chancellor. He not only influenced how the institution grew and flourished during his 12 years in Worcester, his impact has been felt throughout the academic health care community because of his championing of integrated medicine as an academic field.
Dr. Dalen encouraged integrated medicine visionaries throughout his career. While at UMass Medical School, Dalen challenged Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, professor emeritus of medicine, to conduct scientific research on the effect of mindfulness on stress reduction, which eventually led to the creation by Dr. Kabat-Zinn of the Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass Medical School and then the Center for Mindfulness, a internationally renowned center for mind-body medicine, practice and research.
After he left UMMS to become dean of medicine at the University of Arizona, Dalen met Andrew Weil, MD, another visionary with a passion for healing-oriented medicine that addresses mind, body and spirit. Under Dalen’s leadership, the University of Arizona founded the Center for Integrative Medicine, which now has extensive educational and clinical programs, an online fellowship and research in integrative medicine. Currently dean emeritus and professor emeritus of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, he serves as executive director the Weil Foundation, an non-profit organization founded by Dr. Weil to support education in integrative medicine
What is integrative medicine?
According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, integrative medicine “combines mainstream medical therapies and CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.”
From the Weil Foundation website:
Integrative medicine emphasizes the innate healing capacities of the organism; views patients as mental-emotional beings, spiritual entities, and community members as well as physical bodies; addresses all aspects of lifestyle in evaluating health and illness; places great importance on the role of the practitioner-patient relationship in the healing process; and makes use of all appropriate therapies.
“Dr. Dalen was the first medical school dean in the country to promote the values of integrative medicine in academia, and many of the inroads we have made over the past decade can be directly attributed to his passion and hard work,” said Weil. “The reform of medical education has long been the foundation’s top priority, and Dr. Dalen’s leadership, experience and credentials in academic medicine strengthens our efforts to change the way physicians are taught.”
A graduate of Washington State University and the University of Michigan, where he received a master’
