Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

Please note shipping information below for UPS or Federal Express submissions.

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 2010 prize will be presented on the evening of Sunday, November 7 at a joint awards ceremony to be held in conjunction with CASW's 48th annual New Horizons in Science briefing and the National Association of Science Writers' annual program of professional workshops. The recipient's travel to the award ceremony in New Haven, Connecticut will be covered.

The Nominating Process

Editors, colleagues, scientists and others familiar with the candidate's body of work may proffer nominations. Beginning with the current nominating period, individuals may nominate themselves, but are encouraged to send at least one letter of support from a knowledgeable colleague.  The nominator may submit up to five examples of the candidate's journalistic efforts, all published or aired since January 2005.  Books are not eligible. Letters of nomination should include an assessment of the work being submitted along with a biographical sketch.

Please provide five copies of each of the published stories or, in the case of broadcast, radio tapes, DVDs or CDs videocassettes (accompanied by typed or printed scripts).

                                                                 The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010.

 Send the nomination package to:

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

Street address for shipping:

      317 Peacepipe Lane
      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 Kavli Science Journalism) 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.