Highlight of Integrative Well-Being Prize Winner – Fiona Liyanage
The Center for Buddhist Studies is pleased to recognize Fiona Liyanage as a recipient of the Spring 2025 Integrative Well-Being Prize.
Fiona is an honors student double majoring in Physiological and Medical Sciences and Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. A member of the Accelerated Pathway to Medical Education (7-year BS–MD program), she will join the College of Medicine–Tucson’s Class of 2030 in 2026. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of medical humanities, mind–body medicine, and holistic therapeutic interventions, with particular attention to how religious and philosophical traditions—especially Buddhist-informed practices—shape approaches to healing, suffering, and end-of-life care.
Awarded Project:
Buddhist-Informed Approaches to Healing in Palliative Care
Fiona’s honors thesis investigates how Buddhist-derived beliefs and contemplative practices influence symptom management, death acceptance, and spiritual and psychological well-being in palliative care settings. Through a comprehensive narrative literature review, her research analyzes the philosophical foundations of Buddhist healing and examines their intersection with contemporary biomedical models.
Her findings suggest that while physical symptom relief is not always consistently improved, Buddhist-informed interventions reliably enhance emotional peace, spiritual well-being, and acceptance at the end of life. These results invite a reconsideration of prevailing biomedical definitions of “treatment success,” urging greater recognition of the spiritual and psychological dimensions of care.
By identifying gaps in empirical research—particularly regarding secular adaptation and clinical efficacy—this project contributes to emerging interdisciplinary dialogue across religious studies, medicine, and bioethics. Fiona’s work exemplifies a new generation of scholar-physicians committed to integrative, culturally responsive models of healthcare.
Congratulations, Fiona, on this well-deserved honor.