Awards: CASW Cohn Prize

CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting honors not a single story but a body of work published by a single journalist that has made a lasting contribution to the public’s understanding of critical advances in medical science and their impact on human health. Below is Showcase’s collection of Victor Cohn Prize winners.

The Plague Years: How the rise of right-wing nationalism is jeopardizing the world’s health

Maryn McKenna •
PUBLISHED BY: The New Republic ON April 1, 2019
AAAS Kavli Award CASW Cohn Prize

Maryn McKenna, senior writer at WIRED and a widely published author, won CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting in 2023 for her coverage of infectious diseases and global health. This story from her extensive freelance portfolio […]

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What Happened to the Poster Children of OxyContin?

John Fauber and Ellen Gabler •
PUBLISHED BY: Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today ON May 17, 2019
CASW Cohn Prize

Driving home from a hunting trip in 2008, Johnny Sullivan called his wife to say he was having trouble staying awake. …

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Gene Drive Gives Scientists Power to Hijack Evolution

Sharon Begley •
PUBLISHED BY: STAT ON November 17, 2015
CASW Cohn Prize

As soon as Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt began reading the scientific paper, he had a desperate question: Who are these guys?

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The Course of Their Lives

Mark Johnson •
PUBLISHED BY: Journal Sentinel ON October 12, 2013
CASW Cohn Prize

The noisy, first-day-of-school chatter subsides. A hush falls over 200 students in a lecture hall at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Already, their thoughts are drifting up a flight of stairs to the sprawling dissection lab, where in two days they will meet and become intimate with something many have scarcely encountered: Death. …

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