SALT LAKE CITY – Sharon M. Weinstein, MD, FAAHPM, was honored today by The Regence Foundation with a Sojourns Award for her leadership in advancing palliative care in Utah.
 
The award includes a $50,000 grant to support continued advancements in palliative care, which Dr. Weinstein plans to designate to the Albert A. Weinstein Memorial Palliative Medicine Training Award to support physician training in palliative medicine.  Dr. Weinstein is the director of pain medicine and palliative care at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.  
 
Palliative care is a holistic approach to care that brings relief and comfort to seriously ill patients and their families. The award is part of The Regence Foundation’s Sojourns grantmaking program to promote hospital- and community-based palliative care services. Through Sojourns, The Foundation aims to help people with life-threatening and incurable illness to access quality palliative care in their own community.
 
“Dr. Weinstein exemplifies the expertise, caring and leadership in palliative care that The Regence Foundation seeks to extend throughout the communities we serve,” Michael Alexander, Regence Foundation board chair.
 
As a faculty scholar of the Open Society Institute's Project on Death in America, Dr. Weinstein introduced the phrase “integrated palliative care” in 1995 to express the concept of synthesizing holistic supportive care with treatment throughout the course of a disease.
 
In 1998, she established the Pain Medicine and Palliative Care Program at the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI), and currently serves as its director. She also opened an affiliated program at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System and consults at Primary Children's Medical Center. 
 
She completed the first certification exam offered by the American Board of Medical Specialties in 2008, and is one of Utah’s first board-certified physicians in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. In 2009, Dr. Weinstein was named as a Fellow of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
 
About The Regence Foundation
The Regence Foundation is the corporate foundation of Regence, the largest health insurer in the Northwest/Intermountain region and a nonprofit independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. A 501(c)3 grantmaking organization, the Foundation partners with organizations driving significant change in health care delivery and accessibility in Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Through its Sojourns program, the Foundation also supports organizations advancing quality palliative and end-of-life care. For more information visit www.RegenceFoundation.org or www.twitter.com/RegenceGives.