A Dartmouth Health physician has received the highest honor presented by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Society (UHMS) for his scientific contributions to the field of undersea and hyperbaric medicine. Jay C. Buckey Jr., MD, section chief of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s Hyperbaric Medicine department, received the Albert R. Behnke Award during the society’s 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting, held in Denver this May.
The Albert R. Behnke Award is the premier award of the UHMS, recognizing individuals for outstanding scientific contributions to advances in the undersea or hyperbaric biomedical field.
Buckey helped establish a registry that compiles clinical data from every hyperbaric medicine patient treated at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. He continues to manage the registry and chairs its steering committee. What began as a local effort has grown into an international collaboration that includes participating centers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia and Tanzania.
The registry has supported multiple published research studies and continues to advance the field. Four scientific presentations at this year’s UHMS Annual Scientific Meeting were based on registry data.
The Albert R. Behnke Award is named for Capt. Albert Richard Behnke Jr., MD, a pioneering American physician and researcher who was principally responsible for developing the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute. Behnke separated the symptoms of Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE) from those of decompression sickness, advanced the use of oxygen in recompression therapy, and made significant contributions to the science of human body composition.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.