The next step
Zakim died in December 1999, but his dream had come true — thanks in large part to funds generated by a "Friends of Lenny" committee spearheaded by Dana-Farber advocate Kay Kilpatrick. Doherty began work that fall on developing the Institute's first formal program for complementary therapy. By the following spring, Rosenthal had joined as medical director, and an oversight committee had been formed. The center officially opened on Nov. 27, 2000, with administrative offices in the lobby of Dana-Farber's Shields Warren Building and a small treatment room in the nearby Abraham D. Gosman Adult Clinic.
Susan DeCristofaro, RN, MS, OCN, co-chair of the Zakim Center's Education Committee, displays her skills as a reiki master.
Acupuncture, yoga, nutritional support, and other services began immediately, and patient interest quickly exceeded the space and small staff of mostly part-time practitioners. To meet the demand, the center recently moved its treatment facilities to a larger space on the 11th floor of the Institute's Dana building. A second acupuncturist has been added, a complementary therapies nurse is being hired, and pediatrician Wendy Wornham, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston is now providing complementary therapy consults for young patients and their parents in the Jimmy Fund Clinic.
Research to further assess complementary therapies is also continuing. In addition to Richardson's Qigong work, which is now nearing completion, a second Qigong study involving pediatric patients at DFCI is being considered. In addition, a team of investigators from Dana-Farber and Children's plans to look at barriers to the use of complementary therapy for pediatric brain tumor patients, such as physician and patient bias and the refusal of many insurance companies to provide coverage. Kathy Kemper, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Holistic Pediatric Education and Research at Children's, would lead this collaborative effort.
"Just as we do for toxic chemotherapeutic drugs, we are going to take a methodical approach to finding out the types of complementary therapy that work best — as well as those which we should stop using," explains Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, director of Pediatric Medical Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber and research chair for the Zakim Center. "Whether you are talking about cures or just overall wellbeing, our goal is the same for everything we do — to improve the lives of patients with cancer."
According to Kieran, one of the greatest challenges in meeting this objective is that "oncologists today did not grow up in a medical school, residency, and internship environment where complementary therapy was seen as a major treatment approach." He hopes, however, that such feelings are changing.
"There isn't a doctor out there who doesn't counsel his or her patients to get sleep, try and reduce their stress, and eat a balanced, nutritious diet," Kieran observes. "Those are some of the same factors that may be important in our current studies; the difference is that we're trying to isolate them to figure out their roles under different circumstances. We just need people to keep an open mind."
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