Robert Suskind & Leslie Lewinter-Suskind Faculty Global Health Award, 2023
Please join us for a celebration and career reflection address by Dr. Cohn
The 3rd Annual Robert Suskind, C’59, M’63 and Leslie Lewinter-Suskind Faculty Prize in Global Health
In 2021, Penn alum Robert Suskind, MD (C’59, M’63) and his wife, Leslie Lewinter-Suskind, MSS, MFA, generously endowed an annual award recognizing a PSOM faculty member who exemplifies their lifelong commitment to improving global health and access to care through training partnerships. This prize complements the Robert Suskind, C’59, M’63 and Leslie Lewinter-Suskind Prize in Global Health for graduating medical students endowed by Bob and Leslie in 2013.
Please join us on Wednesday, September 27 at 5:30 pm for a celebration and career reflection address by Dr. Cohn followed by a faculty-student mixer organized by the Global Health Interest Group. The event will be held in the Rubenstein Auditorium, Smilow Center for Translational Research. RSVP here.
Bio
Keri A. Cohn, MD, MPH, DTM&H
Dr. Cohn is currently an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Perelman School of Medicine and an attending physician as well as the Director of Global Health and Bioresponse in the division of Emergency Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
As noted by her colleagues, Dr. Cohn’s commitment, and work to improve lives around the world span nearly her entire career. From her time as a resident until today her humanitarian relief work in lower-resourced countries and – critically – through multiple, bidirectional clinical, advocacy, and research partnerships focused on Pediatric Emergency Medicine and across several countries and continents is awe-inspiring. Further, her front-line clinical work in global bio preparedness in West Africa laid the foundation for her to successfully lead the CHOP Global Health & Bioresponse team - thus leveraging her global expertise to benefit our local populations, as well.
Her impressive initiative in developing Pediatric Medicine’s Global Health Fellowship program has enormous potential to save lives through intervention while building the pipeline for pediatric critical care response. Further, we are incredibly grateful for her commitment to developing Penn Med trainees through generously sharing her expertise in PSOM classes as well as research mentoring related to her projects.
Additionally, Dr. Cohn is a nationally recognized leader serving on the executive committee of the Section on Global Health of the American Association of Pediatrics. She was also instrumental in forming the Academic Pediatric Association Global Health Pediatric Accreditation executive sub-committee (GH-PAC).
In the words of her nominating colleagues, “Dr. Cohn’s work has been innovative, collaborative, and sustainable. Her mentorship amplifies the impact of her global health initiatives around the world. Impressively, Keri leads by example and gets “her hands dirty.”
About Bob Suskind and Leslie Lewinter-Suskind
Robert Suskind and Leslie Lewinter met in 1962, during Bob’s third year of medical school when, as a Smith-Klein-French fellow, he was to spend the summer in Cameroon. Since the beginning of their marriage, which they spent in the Peace Corps in Senegal, they have lived, worked and traveled together on every continent except Antarctica (so far!), including taking their four children out of school for a year to travel the globe, observing medical care internationally.
Robert Suskind, MD graduated from the University of Pennsylvania College/Wharton ('59) and Medical School ('63). After pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins, he became Field Director of MALAN, an NIH-funded project in Chiang Mai, Thailand, initiating his research on malnutrition's effect on the immune system and the optimal treatment of the malnourished child. His MIT-Boston Children's PhD program in clinical nutrition for pediatricians was pivotal in raising awareness of nutrition’s importance in clinical medicine. Dr. Suskind’s international experiences include Director of the ICDDRB in Bangladesh and advisor to the Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Kathmandu, Nepal. He has been a Chairman of Pediatrics for twenty years and Dean of three medical schools.
Leslie Lewinter-Suskind received her BS from Penn State, an MSS from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and an MFA from UNO. After Senegal, she directed an inner-city program under the OEO ("War on Poverty"), followed by a study determining the need for infant care centers in the barriadas of Lima, Peru for Johns Hopkins. As Director of Applied Nutrition at MALAN, she set up follow-up, etiology and intervention studies in childhood malnutrition in the villages surrounding Chiang Mai. At LSU, she directed the International Program for the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics.