A Legacy to Improve Health Care: The Charlene and Gary Cohen Lecture Series

How has early detection of cancer advanced in recent years? What is the best way to provide health care that is truly patient-centered? How can artificial intelligence (AI) help oncologists? What are the wider implications of the weight-loss effects of GLP-1 drugs? 

Each of these questions is relevant to physicians at GBMC as they provide the care we would want for our own loved ones. And for the past four years, GBMC physicians have had unique opportunities to pursue them, guided by nationally and internationally regarded experts. Since 2022, the Charlene M. and Gary I. Cohen Healthcare Delivery and Innovation Lectures have supported a day of education and exploration for GBMC’s medical staff. 

Dr. Gary Cohen, founding medical director of the Sandra & Malcolm Berman Cancer Institute at GBMC, endowed the lecture series with a gift in his late wife’s memory one year after she died. His gift established the series and also a research fund to inspire and support GBMC clinicians. The Cohen Lecture is usually presented in October, near the anniversary of Mrs. Cohen’s death. Charlene was a member of the GBMC family, as well as a teacher, and an artist. The Lecture has become “a memorial event,” Dr. Cohen says. “I know she would have appreciated this ongoing legacy.” 

The event brings the GBMC Medical Staff together each year to hear from a guest speaker invited by the Cohen Lecture Committee: Dr. Cohen, who in retirement remains involved in cancer research; Herman & Walter Samuelson Medical Director of the Berman Cancer Institute Paul Celano, MD, FACP, FASCO; and GBMC Chair of Medicine Melvin Blanchard, MD, MACP. 

This year’s speaker was invited by Dr. Blanchard to address GLP-1 medications, the use of which has expanded beyond diabetes to weight loss. Samuel Klein, MD, is the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Nutritional Science and Obesity Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. 

“It is like a university visiting professor,” Dr. Celano says. “You have someone with deep understanding of subject matter currently affecting health care. That person not only speaks to the medical staff but also meets with attending physicians, trainees, and hospital leaders. We all benefit.” GBMC patients benefit as well. 

“Our physicians are so busy treating patients, they rarely have opportunities like this,” Dr. Blanchard says.” And so, we have cross-disciplinary inspiration and it’s very educational.” 

Dr. Cohen is delighted to see this result. This year, he, Dr. Celano, and Dr. Blanchard announced the three research projects that will receive support from the Cohen Research Fund. 

Teams of GBMC clinicians applied for grants to conduct research designed to improve patient care. “My idea was to invite people at the hospital, from all departments, to ask questions and get funding to pursue the answers,” Dr. Cohen says. “I want to focus on health care delivery, creative thinking, and promote research” To his patients, Dr. Cohen’s legacy of caring lives on. He is still mentioned and remembered, particularly at the Berman Cancer Institute. With the lecture series and the research fund, Dr. Gary Cohen has invested in GBMC’s future for many years to come.