A husband and wife who trained decades apart at the University of Michigan Medical School have created a fund to bring stress-reduction classes to patients battling anxiety and fear during illness. Bob Merion, a professor emeritus of surgery who once led the university’s transplant surgery division, and Debbie Merion, a writing coach and author with a longtime meditation practice, established the Debbie and Bob Merion Family Mindfulness Fund at Michigan Medicine. The gift will pay for two mindfulness-based stress reduction class cohorts in 2026, each running six to eight weeks, through the health system’s Integrative Family Medicine Program.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction, known as MBSR, blends meditation, yoga, group discussion and body-awareness exercises. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the approach in the late 1970s, pairing Buddhist meditation techniques with a secular, science-backed structure that hospitals across the country now use to help patients manage chronic pain, anxiety and the emotional weight of serious diagnoses.
Bob Merion took up meditation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the practice eased his own stress enough to become a permanent part of his routine. Debbie Merion, who earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Pine Manor College and has studied under author Natalie Goldberg since 2003, has spent years helping students work through the same fear and anxiety that patients often carry into a hospital stay.
The gift covers a cost the Integrative Family Medicine Program could not fully absorb on its own, moving the classes from a proposal into a scheduled offering for patients in 2026. It gives Michigan Medicine a steady source of support for a program that otherwise competes for space in tight hospital budgets, and it reflects how alumni with direct clinical and personal experience with mindfulness are shaping the way the health system treats the psychological side of illness.
