Donald Nease, MD, and the three medical-student award winners of the Ascona Prize at the 24th International Balint Congress in Aarhus, Denmark.
“The Student, the Patient and the Illness.”
Early this month, Donald Nease, MD, Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at CU Anschutz, presented the Ascona Prize at the 24th International Balint Congress in Aarhus, Denmark, recognizing three medical students from Brazil, Australia, and Hungary for their prize-winning essays about meaningful patient relationships or experiences that shaped their professional development.
Dr. Nease leads the International Balint Award, also known as the “Ascona Prize,” committee on behalf of the Foundation for Psychosomatic and Social Medicine and the International Balint Federation. From overseeing the essay selection process to awarding the inspiring medical students, Dr. Nease finds this work especially meaningful.
“It’s really been an honor to lead this effort. The students’ essays are so powerful and give me hope for the future of healthcare. This work has grown out of my career-long commitment to promoting relationship-centered care through Balint Groups. I’ve had the privilege of serving in leadership roles with both the American Balint Society and the International Balint Federation, and this is a continuation of that work. Deborah Seymour, PsyD, and I continue to run our long-standing faculty group that includes members from our extended Department and others, such as the Division of General Internal Medicine.”
The 2026 search committee reviewed 56 submissions from medical students around the world, who wrote about a meaningful student-patient relationship or experience from their medical studies. The authors of the top three essays each received a €5,000 prize, along with reimbursement for conference registration and travel expenses to attend the congress in Denmark.
The prize-winning essays, along with the other highly reviewed submissions, are published every two years. This year’s collection of Ascona Balint Award Essays, titled “The Student, the Patient and the Illness,” is available to freely access and download from Psychosozial-Verlag. Through these inspiring stories, the award continues to highlight the lasting impact of meaningful relationships and encounters between patients and healthcare providers and the role these connections play in shaping the next generation of physicians.
Faculty interested in deepening their engagement with relationship-centered care may also be interested in joining an online Balint Group, which recently received American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) approval for Performance Improvement credit. The program combines Balint participation with measurement of its impact on participants and practice.
Learn more about the program.