The ASPEN Board of Directors is pleased to announce that it has bestowed the 2024 ASPEN Lifetime Achievement Award upon Charles W. Van Way III, MD, FASPEN.
Dr. Van Way will be honored for his lifelong contributions as a researcher, practitioner, and leader who championed parenteral nutrition, as well as his continued service to ASPEN. He will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award on March 2, 2024, at the ASPEN Nutrition Science & Practice Conference in Tampa, Florida.
Dr. Van Way is a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He continues to work part-time as medical director of the Metabolic Support Service at University Health Truman Medical Center.
“A man of intense intellectual curiosity and seemingly inexhaustible energy, Dr. Van Way has achieved more and contributed more than is conceivable for only one lifetime,” said ASPEN President Phil Ayers, PharmD, BCNSP, FMSHP, FASHP. “We are indeed fortunate that at Yale, he decided to become a physician rather than a physicist.”
ASPEN first benefitted from Dr. Van Way’s leadership in 1985 when he chaired the organizing committee for the Colorado Chapter of ASPEN and then served as that chapter’s first president. He then took on a national role, serving as a director-at-large on the ASPEN Board from 1987 to 1989, then chairing the Committee on Information Technology, serving on the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nutrition Research, and twice serving on the Nominating Committee.
He again served on the Board of Directors from 2007 to 2016 and was elected vice president in 2008 and ASPEN’s 35th president in 2010. Dr. Van Way was named a Fellow of ASPEN in 2012.
“Dr. Van Way is incapable of sitting on the sidelines and not contributing. The minute his term as ASPEN president ended, he took up the gavel as president of the Rhoads Research Foundation, a position he held for five years,” said Foundation President M. Molly McMahon, MD, FASPEN. “He then chaired the Endowment Campaign Committee from 2016 to 2019. To this day, he’s hard at work on the Development Committee.”
“His dedication and commitment to research have been equally indefatigable. He has not only directed major research programs and conducted his own clinical studies on nutrition support but has also been a strong advocate for adequate funding on the national level,” she added.
Because of Dr. Van Way’s steadfast commitment to the Rhoads Research Foundation, the library in the ASPEN office is named after him.
Dr. Van Way has written over 450 publications and is the editor or author of nine books, including five on nutrition and nutritional support in critically ill and surgical patients. In addition, he served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition from 2002 to 2007 after two years as editor-in-chief of Nutrition in Clinical Practice.
“My activities in ASPEN have been a constant anchor for my often-changing professional life. While my primary clinical interest has always been general and thoracic surgery, my work in nutrition has been a major part of my professional life,” said Dr. Van Way.
A graduate of Yale University, Dr. Van Way received his medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. From 1964 to 1972, he trained in general and thoracic surgery at the Vanderbilt University Affiliated Hospitals and completed a fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. During this time, he worked with several pioneers in parenteral and enteral nutrition, most notably Dr. H. C. Meng, Dr. Stanley Dudrick, and Dr. James O’Neill.
Dr. Van Way next completed two years of military service at Ireland Army Hospital, Ft. Knox, Kentucky, serving as chief of thoracic surgery. He later rejoined the Army Reserve and, over the next 25 years, commanded medical units ranging from surgical detachment to medical group. He retired as a colonel in 2003 and was awarded the Legion of Merit for his service.
His academic career began in 1974 at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he was associate professor of surgery, director of The Halsted Laboratory for Surgical Research, chief of surgery at Denver General Hospital, and director of Surgical Nutritional Support Services at the University of Colorado’s Medical Center.
Dr. Van Way then joined the faculty of the University of Missouri in Kansas City in 1988 as a clinical professor of surgery. He was named chair of the surgery department in 2000. In 2008, he was named Sosland/Missouri Chair of Trauma Research and director of UMKC’s Shock/Trauma Research Center, a group of research laboratories focused on hemorrhagic shock and sepsis. Dr. Van Way is recognized as a co-founder of that center.
He has also served as president of the Missouri Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, the Metropolitan Medical Society of Greater Kansas City, and the Missouri State Medical Association. In 2012, he received MSMA’s President’s Award for excellence in service to medicine, colleagues, and patients.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my career,” said Dr. Van Way. “The greatest satisfaction has come from first, caring for patients; second, relating to colleagues, including doctors, nurses, and others in the health care team; and third, training younger colleagues as surgeons.”
Retirement is indeed not in Dr. Van Way’s vocabulary. In addition to working part-time and serving ASPEN, he volunteers at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, gives lectures on military medicine, and has picked up his old hobby as an amateur radio operator broadcasting over the museum’s WW1USA.
Please join us in honoring Dr. Van Way during the ASPEN 2024 Nutrition Science & Practice Conference in Tampa or virtually on the ASPEN24 conference site. You can share a message, picture, or video for Dr. Van Way on our Kudoboard.