Back Row (L-R): Deena Zakim, Jesse Chebot (Deena’s husband), Phillip Yacouby (Shari’s husband)
Spring 2026
By Kathy Clute
Photography by John Deputy
When the late Leonard “Lenny” Zakim was being treated for multiple myeloma in the 1990s, he found that complementary therapies such as acupuncture, massage, and Tai Chi eased the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. But accessing those modalities was difficult, and he dreamed of—and lobbied for—a space at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where they could be provided to other patients.
In 2000, largely thanks to Zakim’s persistence, Dana-Farber established the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living. It started small, as one room off the Dana Building lobby. Now it has grown into a spacious hub of clinical services, group programs, and transformative research that celebrated its 25th anniversary in October 2025. The Zakim Center serves thousands of patients every month—in person and online—and conducts peer-reviewed research on how integrative therapies mitigate the side effects of treatment and improve patient outcomes.
“Lenny Zakim came to the leadership of Dana-Farber saying, ‘We want a center that’s not focused on finding new chemotherapy agents, but on helping people feel better by incorporating treatments that have been available for millennia,’” Jennifer Ligibel, MD, director of the Zakim Center, told attendees at the anniversary celebration. “It was a radical concept, but very much in line with Dana-Farber’s long-term mission of not just treating the cancer, but treating the patient and family. And over time, as the number of patients that we treated grew, our footprint did as well, transforming into a beautiful center designed to be an oasis for patients going through the tumult of a cancer journey.”
Unlike conventional cancer treatments, health insurance doesn’t cover many complementary therapies. Yet thanks to millions of dollars in donations since 2000, most of the Zakim Center’s offerings are free. “We wouldn’t be able to do what we do for our patients without our partnership with our amazing donors,” Ligibel said.
In addition to integrative practices such as acupuncture, massage, Tai Chi, meditation, expressive arts therapies, and Qigong, the Zakim Center also offers a full portfolio of healthy living programs. These include exercise classes, strength training, one-on-one health coaching sessions, nutrition seminars, cooking demonstrations, and weight-management programs. Through the My Zakim online portal, patients and families can also access many of these programs virtually. The platform has logged over 1.2 million worldwide visits since 2020, including more than 310,000 in 2025.