Newswise — Dr. James N. Weinstein has been named the recipient of this year's Wiltse Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine. Weinstein is only the 7th person to receive this prestigious international honor, which comes with a cash award of $50,000.
The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to "an outstanding individual scientist, clinician or basic science researcher who has made a major contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the field of spinal disorders." The award will be presented to Dr. Weinstein in Bergen, Norway next week, during the June 13-17 annual meeting of the Society.
"This is a tremendous recognition for me," Weinstein said this week. "I am honored and humbled to be included in the company of giants in the field of spine research."
Weinstein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopaedics at Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. World-renowned for his advocacy and leadership in shared decision-making, and for his research on outcomes of spine surgery, he has spent a lifetime blending the principles of Dartmouth's Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences (CECS) with the most effective care of patients with spine-related complaints.
Currently, Weinstein's research is focused on leading the five-year, $13.5 million, SPORT (Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial) clinical trial. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study is the first multicentered, randomized, controlled trial to look at the relative effectiveness/efficacy of surgical versus non-surgical treatment for the three most commonly diagnosed lumbar spine conditions. Widely anticipated results of the clinical trial are expected to be released over the next 12-18 months.
The International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine is a non-profit organization founded in 1974 to bring together leading research, clinicians and scientists looking at the lumbar spine in health and in disease.
Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award (sponsored by the Stryker Corporation) are:
2000: Professor Alf Nachemson of Sweden;2001: Dr. John Frymoyer of Burlington, VT, USA;2002: Dr. Gunnar Andersson of Chicago, IL, USA;2003: Dr. Malcolm Pope of Aberdeen, Scotland;2004: Dr. Kiyoshi Kaneda of Sapporo, Japan;2005: Dr. Manohar Panjabi of New Haven, CT, USA
Dr. Weinstein received his DO from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1977. Following residency at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, he joined the Orthopaedics Department at the University of Iowa, where in 1991 he was named an endowed professor. He went on to be Co-Director of the Spine Research Center at University of Iowa. In 1996, he came to DMS as a member of the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, where his work on surgical outcomes and variation was a major focus of the 2000 and 2004 Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. He received his Masters degree at Dartmouth in 1994 from the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences. In 1998, he founded the Center for Shared Decision-Making at DHMC, which has become a model for health care organizations across the country and the subject of a study of innovations in health care by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Dr. Weinstein is a Director of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, Editor-in Chief of Spine Journal, and the author of more than 250 publications. He lives in Hanover, NH.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center brings together the expertise, dedication, and compassion of one of the nation's top hospitals and the scholarship, research, and leadership of one of the nation's oldest and most distinguished medical schools to form New Hampshire's only academic medical center.
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