Buddhist teacher Frank Ostaseski, the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder and director of the Metta Institute, is the 2018 recipient of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) Humanities Award.

Ostaseski has been one of the leading voices in contemplative end-of-life care since the 1980s. In 1987, he helped found the first Buddhist hospice in North America, the Zen Hospice Project. In 2004, he founded the Metta Institute with a mission to provide education on spirituality in dying. The institute offers one of the most comprehensive professional training programs in the US, the End of Life Care Practitioner Program.

The AAHPM Humanities Award recognizes people who have used the discipline of humanities to improve palliative care through community work or professional education, and those whose work has advanced the relationship between humanities and palliative care. In the past, winners have included artists, poets, and medical educators, such as Joan Didion, Rachel Naomi Remen, and Atul Gawande.

“I am honored to be the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Humanities award from AAHPM,” Ostaseski wrote in a Facebook post.

Ostaseski will accept the award via video recording during the annual assembly in Boston, MA held March 14 to 17.

For more on Ostaseski, watch his interview with Lion’s Roar’s Lindsay Kyte, and read about his life and work in “How Will You Die?,” from the November 2017 issue of Lion’s Roar.