UW-CTRI Founding Director Dr. Michael Fiore accepts the Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care at the National Academy of Medicine meeting in October 2024.
Past awardees of the Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care include Dr. Anthony Fauci, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey and, back in 1992, Dr. C. Everett Koop.
This year, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) presented the medal to Dr. Michael Fiore for his leadership to advance science, translate research into medical practice, and improve public health by helping people address their tobacco use.
Fiore, founding director of UW-CTRI, led the center for 32 years with Founding Associate Director Dr. Tim Baker.
“Dr. Fiore has led a national effort to transform how healthcare systems treat patients who smoke, to ensure that they are no longer neglected and left untreated,” said Dr. Steve Schroeder, a past Leinhard awardee and now retired director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California-San Francisco.
The need for this transformation is clear: Despite the fact that smoking is responsible for 20% of all deaths in the United States, killing almost 500,000 Americans each year, it was largely ignored by both clinicians and healthcare systems until the 1980s. In response, Dr. Fiore initiated a programmatic series of scientific, clinical, and policy efforts to integrate evidence-based tobacco dependence treatment into healthcare. As a result, tens of millions of smokers have received evidence-based treatments and millions have quit.
In his 1991 JAMA Commentary, Fiore proposed that tobacco use status be adopted as a vital sign for every patient at every health care visit. Today, that is the healthcare standard nationwide.
Fiore served as chair of the panels that produced all three editions of the United States Public Health Service (PHS) Clinical Practice Guideline: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence (1996, 2000, 2008), which provides a gold standard for healthcare providers. That PHS Guideline was updated and published in 2008 with the simultaneous endorsement of 58 leading medical and public health organizations.
Fiore has made other contributions that have fundamentally altered the landscape of tobacco treatment in healthcare, so that such treatment is now a “standard of care.” These efforts include:
- Chairing the first United States HHS Subcommittee on Tobacco Cessation at the direction of then-Secretary Tommy Thompson. A core recommendation of the subcommittee report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, was to establish a National Tobacco Quit Line. After a briefing by Dr. Fiore, Secretary Thompson allocated $50 million to establish the national quitline. Since it became operational in 2004, the national quitline has helped more than 10 million individuals to quit smoking via 800-QUIT-NOW.
- Directing (with Dr. Susan Curry) The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s programs, Addressing Tobacco in Managed Care and Addressing Tobacco in Healthcare.
- Serving as an expert witness at the request of the United States Justice Department (DOJ) as part of their landmark 2005 lawsuit against the tobacco industry. The DOJ asked Fiore to formulate and present to the court a $130 billion, 25-year plan to help 33 million smokers quit.
- Leading an effort to leverage the capabilities of EHR technology to integrate tobacco dependence treatment into healthcare. Fiore has led efforts to re-engineer the EHR to identify every tobacco user, refer them seamlessly to highly effective tobacco treatments, and provide chronic care via programmed follow-up assessment and support.
- Directing the NCI’s Cancer Center Cessation Initiative (C3I), a $30 Million Moonshot-funded effort to transform oncology care so that every cancer patient who smokes is treated for tobacco dependence. This effort has helped more than 100,000 cancer patients address their tobacco use.
“Viewed collectively, Michael Fiore embodies the definition of a Lienhard Award recipient,” Schroeder said.
“Dr. Fiore’s tremendous efforts throughout his career have played a major role in reducing the number of people who smoke, resulting in public health benefits both in the US and worldwide, such as reductions in premature or underweight births and risks of cardiovascular disease and cancers,” said NAM President Dr. Victor Dzau. “These benefits aid not only smokers, but their loved ones, and society in general. Dr. Fiore is most deserving of this prestigious award.”
“This is a wonderful honor and I’m delighted to be recognized with this esteemed group of prior awardees,” Fiore said. “I’m just so happy to have had the opportunity to serve people who wanted to address their tobacco addiction for more than three decades. I couldn’t have done it without countless colleagues at UW, collaborators at other universities and our funders. I thank you all.”
