PITTSBURGH (AP) – When former emergency room doctor Bill Thomas took a part-time job at a nursing home, he didn’t know he was taking the first step toward creating an international nonprofit organization that could revolutionize eldercare. But while he was treating an elderly woman for a minor skin rash, he said, “She just took a hold of my hand and looked at me and said, ‘I’m so lonely.”‘
Experiences like that gave the 46-year-old Harvard Medical School graduate the idea to start the Eden Alternative. Founded in 1992, the organization seeks to transform nursing home and assisted-living facilities from sterile, hospital environments to vibrant, active communities for both residents and caregivers.
Thomas was one of six people named Monday to receive a Heinz Award, an annual $250,000 prize given to people for making notable contributions in the arts and humanities; the environment; the human condition; public policy; and technology, the economy and employment.
The Heinz Family Foundation of Pittsburgh has presented the awards since 1994 in memory of Sen. John Heinz III, heir to the Heinz food fortune who died in a 1991 plane crash. His widow, Teresa Heinz Kerry, now the wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is chairwoman of the foundation.
Since 1992, more than 300 nursing homes across the U.S. have been “Edenized” with colorful decorations, pets and onsite day care for children. Thomas is also spearheading a project to create small community-care facilities that look and feel more like home.
“He has been a pivotal figure,” said Rosalie A. Kane, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “He took very, very seriously the issue of what life was like in the nursing homes, and from that small beginning he has been an extraordinary leader and a great communicator.”
Another Heinz winner, Paul Anastas, is being honored as one of the pioneers of “green chemistry,” which seeks to reduce chemical waste by using new, environmentally friendly compounds in everyday products and chemical processes.
A former Environmental Protection Agency official and founder of the Green Chemistry Institute, Anastas persuaded the Clinton administration in 1996 to sponsor the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards program, which encourages companies and researchers to embrace green technologies.
“Basically all we have is material and energy,” said Anastas, a Quincy, Mass. native. “And (green chemistry) is a fundamental redesign of the materials.”
For example, Anastas said, common food containers can be made from a chemical based on plant sugars instead of a petroleum-based plastic. Unlike the petroleum-based container, the plant-based one is biodegradable, Anastas said.
“The panel in your car can be made from these … a wedding dress can be made from it. I own a shirt made from it,” said Anastas, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a master’s and doctorate from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Other green chemistry products include pesticides that target specific organisms like mosquitoes but are not harmful to others, he said.
“(Anastas) is globally and deservedly recognized as the primary inspirational force and principal founder of the field of green chemistry,” said Terrence Collins, director of the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Other recipients of this year’s Heinz Awards include:
-James Nachtwey, a New York-based photographer honored for his coverage of wars and hot spots around the globe. Nachtwey has an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Art.
-Bruce Katz, founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, which seeks to help cities and suburbs become more competitive in sustainable ways.
-Leroy Hood, owner of 14 biomedical patents, including the DNA sequencer that laid the foundation for the Human Genome Project.
-Elma Holder, an advocate for the elderly and the founder of the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, who won the Heinz Awards’ Chairman’s Medal. Holder began her activism in the 1970s with Ralph Nader and Maggie Kuhn of the Gray Panthers. She retired in 2002 to care for her own elderly mother.
—
On the Net:
Heinz Awards: http://www.heinzawards.net
Send questions/comments to the editors.
