Tribute to Barrie Cassileth, PhD 

Founding President of the Society for Integrative Oncology

Founding Chief of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) Integrative Medicine Service (IMS) First Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine.

Founding Member of the Advisory Council to the National Institute of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine, now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Member, National and the NY–NJ Regional Boards of the American Cancer Society

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dr. Barrie Cassileth, founding president of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO). “Dr. Cassileth was one of the most elegant, hardworking, and caring women I have ever met,” Ting Bao, MD, DABMA, MS, the director of Integrative Breast Oncology at MSK and Immediate Past-President of SIO, said of her mentor. “It is amazing how much the field of integrative medicine has developed over the past twenty years; this progress would have not been possible without her. We will all miss her greatly.”

From the beginning days of the Society in 2003, Dr. Cassileth sowed the seeds of research, education, international outreach, and the value of the patient voice, which grew into the thriving SIO of 2022. The Society is still prioritizing these goals as it leads the way towards comprehensive, evidence-informed, integrative oncology care to improve the lives of people with cancer worldwide.  

Dr. Cassileth was also the founding Chief of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) Integrative Medicine Service (IMS) and the first Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine. “Dr. Cassileth had great courage and vision,” said Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, the current Chief of Integrative Medicine at MSK and SIO Past President, who also described how Dr. Cassileth’s seminal work in clinical programming and research opened doors for the field of evidence-informed integrative oncology.

Importantly, Dr. Cassileth oversaw the development of the first of a series of integrative oncology clinical practice guidelines, which continue to be developed today by SIO in collaboration with mainstream organizations such as the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO). As Dr. Cassileth explained in a 2017 ASCO Post interview, “My strong belief in the necessity of helping patients and family members, as well as physicians and staff, participate in cancer research spurred me on. It was always clear that patients and family members need more than excellent surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and all the new treatments.”

Born in Philadelphia, Dr. Cassileth attended Bennington College in Vermont, which she described as “a cauldron of intellectual freedom.” She earned a PhD in medical sociology at the University of Pennsylvania while working in the UPenn Comprehensive Cancer Center’s inpatient unit for people with leukemia, where she was deeply affected by her interaction with patients who were in the end-stages of the disease. It was at UPenn that she also initiated the first palliative care program that included psychosocial therapies in an academic setting in the US.  

After a period of years in North Carolina, where she was appointed Consulting Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Duke, she was recruited in 1999 by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York City to develop an integrative medicine program. This program, the Integrative Medicine Service at MSK, still offers complementary therapies to inpatients at the main MSK hospital as well as outpatient services and is still conducting practice-changing research in integrative oncology. 

It was partly the need for scientifically robust clinical research supporting the use of complementary therapies to manage symptoms and side effects of cancer and its treatment that inspired Dr. Cassileth to found the Society for Integrative Oncology in 2003. She invited like-minded pioneers in research who were also committed to improving the lives of people with cancer. These fellow integrative medicine research pioneers became the founding members of SIO and its first presidents, David Rosenthal, MD; Debu Tripathy, MD; Peter Johnstone, MD; and Lorenzo Cohen, PhD.  

During her long career, Dr. Cassileth published several books, from The Alternative Medicine Handbook: The Complete Reference Guide to Alternative and Complementary Therapies in 1998 to The Complete Guide to Complementary Therapies in Cancer Care in 2011, and, in 2014, Survivorship: Living Well During and After Cancer. 

Next year, SIO will celebrate its Twentieth Anniversary at the 20th International Conference in Banff, Alberta. Today, as we carry forward the mission of SIO, we gratefully offer this tribute to Dr. Barrie Cassileth, the kind, brilliant, and visionary founding president of the Society for Integrative Oncology.

The Society for Integrative Oncology: Two Decades of Global Leadership in Evidence-Based Integrative Health Care

The first column by SIO Leadership in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine (JICM), features the latest expert column, “The Society for Integrative Oncology: Two Decades of Global Leadership in Evidence-Based Integrative Health Care”. The paper is available Open Access from November 3rd through the 17th, 2022 online here. 

SIO leaders have co-authored a defining international publication alongside key stakeholders from NIH, WHO, Europe, and countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and India. Titled “Integrative oncology: Addressing the global challenges of cancer prevention and treatment”, the open-access article was published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Corresponding author and SIO Past-President, Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center writes, “We advocate for using SIO’s integrative oncology framework to further develop this field to meet the global challenges of cancer control.” This publication builds on the momentum of global collaboration demonstrated at the September 2021 SIO 18th International Conference, during which oncology leaders from countries around the world discussed priorities for improving oncology outcomes worldwide.

 Find the link to the article here. 

August 6, 2021

Dr. Jun Mao, SIO Past President and current SIO Trustee, comments on cancer patients who have struggled with addiction in the past and how it affects their pain management.

Listen to Dr. Jun Mao on Good Morning America here, and where Kathy Griffin opens up about her treatment after lung cancer surgery.

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/video/kathy-griffin-opens-treatment-lung-cancer-surgery-79309865

SIO Membership Scholarship is an opportunity to provide assistance to individuals whose financial circumstances are such that full payment of membership dues would pose a financial hardship. Please download and complete the SIO Membership Scholarship Application and email to: info@integrativeonc.org.

A growing number of studies have examined observational associations and interventional effects of diet, physical activity and obesity on various biological, psychosocial, and behavioral outcomes associated with cancer.4-6 These studies have focused on healthy populations, high risk populations and those diagnosed with cancer.4-8 However, even with the growing number of scholarly publications in this field, many of the studies suffer methodological limitations, and this research to date has not led to sufficient implementation of weight management and/or physical activity interventions/programs in the clinic or community. Recognition of the complex, multidimensional relationship between energy balance and cancer has motivated the development of new transdisciplinary training models, as the training of scientists and clinicians in energy balance and cancer research is critical.

More details and application.

The overall goal of the Transdisciplinary Research in Energetics and Cancer Research Education Program (TREC Training Workshop) is to provide an annual, in person 5-day transdisciplinary research in energy balance and cancer training course early career investigators (i.e., junior faculty and postdocs). Cohorts will span a diverse array of academic backgrounds (i.e., basic, clinical and population cancer research) and in collaboration with the wider community of TREC-inspired scientists will enhance the ability to produce innovative and impactful transdisciplinary research in energetics and cancer and clinical care.

The prevalence of obesity in the United States and globally has increased significantly over the last three decades, with more than one-third of US adults categorized as obese and one-third categorized as overweight.1 Obesity is quickly overtaking tobacco use as the leading preventable cause of developing and dying of cancer, and it is primarily caused by poor diet and physical inactivity which are also independent risk factors for cancer development and mortality.1-3 Given the rising prevalence of obesity, poor diet and physical inactivity, known in combination as “energy balance” or “energetics”, as well as their associations with factors of cancer, innovative research, clinical care and training of scientists are needed to lower the prevalence of these risk factors and in turn, lower cancer incidence and mortality rates.

“From his youth, Tony was inspired by the sound of his father’s Native American drum.” So begins the biographical sketch of musician Tony Redhouse on his website, www.TonyRedhouse.net. Be sure not to miss his special wellness session he will conduct during SIO’s 2020 Virtual Conference October 16-17, 2020. Watch for news and further details about the conference on our website, through our newsletters and on social media.