Dr. Lewis Cohen Wins Eleanor and Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award

SPRINGFIELD — Dr. Lewis Cohen of the Psychiatric Consultation Service at Baystate Medical Center has been chosen from among a highly competitive roster of nominations to receive the prestigious 2014 Eleanor and Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award. The highest honor bestowed annually by the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine (APM), the award recognizes outstanding achievement across an entire career in psychosomatic medicine in training, research, clinical practice, and leadership. “The competition was quite fierce this year; however, the committee heavily endorsed your candidacy and felt that you far outshone your competition,” wrote Dr. Elisabeth Kunkel, chair of the APM’s fellowship and awards committee, in a letter to Cohen. Added Dr. Benjamin Liptztin, chair of the Department of Psychiatry for Baystate Health, “this is a great honor for Dr. Cohen, as well as for Baystate. It is especially fitting since he trained and worked with Dr. Hackett.” Cohen, who also serves as a professor of Psychiatry for Tufts University School of Medicine — for which Baystate Medical Center serves as the Western Campus — is director of Baystate’s Renal Palliative Care Initiative. He has written numerous journal articles on dialysis, palliative care, and end-of-life issues, and is also the author of the book No Good Deed: A Story of Medicine, Murder Accusations and the Debate Over How We Die. He is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rockefeller Scholars Bellagio Residency Award, a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, and the Tufts University School of Medicine Distinguished Faculty Award. The Eleanor and Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award was established in 1988 to honor Dr. Thomas Hackett Jr., professor and chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. He was a long-time leader in the field of consultation-liaison psychiatry. He died of a heart attack at age 59, two months after he took office as president of APM. The first Hackett award was presented in 1989, and in 2009, the award was renamed to include his wife, Eleanor, who passed away of leukemia in April 2009. She had presented the award at the annual meeting almost every year since its inception. The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine represents psychiatrists dedicated to the advancement of medical science, education, and healthcare for people with simultaneous psychiatric and general medical conditions, and provides national and international leadership in furthering those goals.