Bowdoin Grad Awarded One of Medicine’s Top Prizes for Anti-Smoking Efforts

Yancy was on the selection committee for the 2024 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care and was speaking at the most recent annual meeting of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), where the prize was awarded.

Established by the NAM in 1986, the Lienhard Award honors individuals for exceptional contributions to improving US health care services. The latest recipient is Dr. Michael C. Fiore ’76, who has devoted his career to advancing science and promoting policies that collectively aid individuals in their efforts to overcome tobacco dependence.

Fiore, who is the University of Wisconsin Hilldale Professor of Medicine, cofounded the University’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention in 1992 and chaired the organization until last year. Fiore has produced hundreds of articles, chapters, and books on tobacco addiction and contributed to US Surgeon General reports on the subject.

His achievements also include setting up the 1-800-QUIT-NOW nationwide hotline in 2004 and helping draft federal guidelines on smoking treatment. Fiore, who majored in biology and psychology at Bowdoin, is a nationally recognized expert on quitting smoking who has shared his insight with, among others, the US Senate and the audience of Good Morning America.

In his acceptance speech, Fiore pointed out that, although smoking rates have declined substantially since the 1960s—from around 45 percent of adults to around 11 percent today—15 million Americans are still expected to die over the next few decades from a disease directly caused by their smoking. The risks of smoking are generally regarded as “yesterday’s news,” he said, because most of those affected are “the poor, the least educated, and those with mental health and substance abuse diagnoses. I dedicate the award to them,” added Fiore, “and to our continued effort to truly eliminate tobacco dependence from our society.”