Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting

The Award

CASW established the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting in 2000. Given annually, the prize seeks to honor a writer for a body of work published or broadcast within the last five years which, for reasons of uncommon clarity, accuracy, breadth of coverage, enterprise, originality, insight and narrative power, has made a profound and lasting contribution to public awareness and understanding of critical advances in medical science and their impact on human health and well-being.

Beginning in 2023, the Cohn Prize is generously underwritten by Michelson Philanthropies, a Los Angeles-based philanthropic foundation devoted to supporting medical research, equity in education, and improving animal welfare.

The honoree receives an award of $5,000 and a certificate.

The annual deadline for submission of nominations is June 30. For full details, see the Rules and Eligibility page.

Winners of the Victor Cohn Prize

2025 – Charles Piller, Science
2024 – Usha McFarling, STAT
2023 – Maryn McKenna, WIRED
2022 – Pam Belluck, The New York Times, and Stephanie M. Lee, for stories published by BuzzFeed News
2021 – Helen Branswell, STAT, and Amy Maxmen, Nature
2020 – Ed Yong, The Atlantic
2019 – Apoorva Mandavilli, Spectrum
2018 – Laura Beil, freelance medical writer
2017 – Sharon Begley, STAT
2016 – Liz Szabo, USA Today and Kaiser Health News
2015 – Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
2014 – Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times
2013 – John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Joanne Silberner, radio journalist
2012 – Jon Cohen, Science
2011 – Ron Winslow, The Wall Street Journal
2010 – Marilynn Marchione, The Associated Press
2009 – Denise Grady, The New York Times
2008 – Joe Palca, National Public Radio
2007 – Geeta Anand, staff writer, The Wall Street Journal
2006 – Jerome Groopman, staff writer, The New Yorker
2005 – Rick Weiss, reporter, The Washington Post
2004 – Michelle Trudeau, reporter, National Public Radio
2003 – Shannon Brownlee, freelance reporter
2002 – Daniel Q. Haney, medical editor, The Associated Press
2001 – Jon Palfreman, freelance documentary filmmaker
2000 – Laurie Garrett, reporter, Newsday, and Lawrence K. Altman, reporter, The New York Times

About Victor Cohn

As science and medical reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune and then science editor, science and medical reporter and health columnist for the Washington Post, Victor Cohn was renowned for the clarity, honesty, robustness, fairness and effectiveness of his reporting. He was at the forefront of coverage of virtually every major advance in medicine over the last five decades, from the triumph of the Salk polio vaccine and the first human experiments with cancer chemotherapy to the eradication of smallpox and the manipulation of human genes.

He was the first triple winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for newspaper reporting and the first two-time winner of both the National Association of Science Writers’ Science-in-Society Award and the AAAS-Westinghouse (now the AAAS Kavli) Science Journalism Award.

In 1959, Cohn co-founded the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. In 1961, he was elected to a two-year term as president of NASW. Cohn is the author of several books, including News and Numbers, a widely used journalists’ guide for interpreting and reporting statistical data in medical and scientific reports.