The Victor Cohn Prize
for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting

The 8th annual prize was awarded to Geeta Anand of the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 21, 2007, during CASW's 45th Annual New Horizons in Science Briefing for Journalists in Spokane, Wash. (See the press release.)

The deadline for submissions for the 2008 prize will be July 31, 2008.

Previous Winners

Purpose

CASW established the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Reporting in 2000. The prize, which is given annually, 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 .

The Prize

The honoree will receive an award of $3,000 and a framed certificate. The prize will be presented at the annual banquet of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing to be held in conjunction with the annual New Horizons in Science Briefing. Travel expenses for the recipient to the award ceremony will be covered.

The Nominating Process

Editors, colleagues, scientists and others familiar with the candidate's body of work may proffer nominations. Individuals may not nominate themselves. The nominator should submit no more than six examples of the candidate's journalistic efforts. Books are not eligible. Letters of nomination should include: an in-depth evaluation of the stories being submitted that, in the eyes of the nominator, make the candidate worthy of the prize and a biographical sketch of the candidate.

Please provide six copies of the published work, or standard audio or videocassettes (accompanied by typed or printed scripts).

Send the nomination package to:

The Victor Cohn Award
CASW
P.O. Box 910
Hedgesville, WV 25427

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 distinguished himself for the clarity, honesty, robustness, fairness and effectiveness of his reporting. He was very much 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 Writer's Science-in-Society Award, and the AAAS-Westinghouse (now the AAAS-Whittaker Foundation) prize.

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.