About the AUTHOR

Elizabeth Cohen is the award-winning, senior medical correspondent for CNN's health, wellness and medical unit. Elizabeth reports daily on breaking medical news and consumer tips on CNN and on CNN.com and is the author of popular CNN.com column "The Empowered Patient," which has motivated millions of Americans to take charge of their medical care.

During her career with at CNN, Elizabeth has provided viewers with in-person, on-the-scene accounts of the medical and human impact of natural and man-made disasters including reporting from Haiti after the earthquake, New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Virginia Tech following the student shootings, and New York City in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Cohen received a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and a National Headliner Award in 2006 for "A Lesson Before Dying," a feature on the medical decisions made by a Georgia man at the end of his life. In 2007, Cohen was honored by the Newswomen's Club of New York and the New York Association of Black Journalists for the feature African-Americans and Bone Marrow Transplants. The Mental Health America Media Awards honored her in 2007 for Perfection Obsession, a feature focusing on a teen's battle against obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2008, Cohen received a Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television for Where's Molly?, a feature on a man's search for his sister nearly 50 years after she was placed in a residential mental health institution.

Before joining CNN in 1991, Elizabeth was associate producer of Green Watch, an environmental television program on WLVI in Boston, a reporter for States News Service in Washington, D.C., and a reporter for the The Times Union newspaper in Albany, N.Y., where she won a Hearst Award.

Cohen is the recipient of the outstanding alumna award from Columbia College in New York City, where she received a bachelor's degree in history, and the Distinguished Alumni Award at Boston University where she earned a master's degree in public health.