CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Dr. Tanya Edwards, who for nearly a decade led the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Integrative Medicine, died Wednesday of breast cancer. She would have turned 54 on Thursday.
A native of Flint, Michigan and a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, Edwards joined the Clinic in 2004.
In September of that year, she opened the Center for Integrative Medicine's outpatient clinic in Broadview Heights, the first of what would be five outpatient locations before the center consolidated its operations to expanded space in Lyndhurst in 2008.
The center, part of the Clinic's Wellness Institute, was created to provide a holistic approach to medicine with an emphasis on research and education.
Edwards, who earned a master’s degree in medical education from John Carroll University and Case Western Reserve University, taught complementary and alternative medicine courses at CWRU School of Medicine. There, she established the area of concentration for alternative medicine, and served as faculty adviser of the medical students’ integrative medicine interest group and of the Student National Medical Association.
Edwards also helped to integrate complementary medical education into the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.
“As an institute chair, what you want is your department leaders to keep pushing the envelope of science and transmit that to medical care," said Dr. Michael Roizen, chief medical officer of the Clinic’s Wellness Institute. “She kept innovating and developing.”
Edwards, Roizen said, was someone with a gift for bringing out the best in everyone near her.
That wasn’t limited to her colleagues; it applied to the entire Clinic institution as well.
“When she found out that [the cost of] acupuncture was getting out of the reach of some of the community members, she developed shared medical acupuncture visits,” Roizen said. “It lowered the cost [to patients] by more than 50 percent.”
Edward’s lasting legacy, he said, is that she helped the Clinic – steeped in tradition – embrace newer medical approaches.
“She cared deeply about us all and made all of us feel like family … and made everyone feel like they were a part of her family,” he said.
Until 2012, Edwards practiced as a family physician at the Cleveland Clinic Independence Family Health Center. She continued to oversee the Center for Integrative Medicine's growth, which included staff additions, expansion of services - among them the Chinese Herbal Therapy Clinic - and a women's wellness retreat.
In February the Clinic renamed the Center for Integrative Medicine after Edwards, dedicating it in her honor.
Edwards is survived by her son, Robert Stallion, and daughter, Tara Stallion; mother Goldie Edwards; sister Talli Flanigan; partner Ameer Abdul-Malik; and five nieces and nephews.
A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Schulte & Mahon-Murphy Funeral Home, 5252 Mayfield Rd., Lyndhurst. The family will receive friends from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday at the funeral home.
A visitation also will be held in Cincinnati from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, with a funeral service immediately following at Gwen Mooney Funeral Home at Spring Grove Cemetery, 4389 Spring Grove Ave., Cincinnati.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to The Tanya I. Edwards MD Center for Integrative Medicine, 1950 Richmond Road, Lyndhurst, Ohio 44124.