‘Genius grant’ awarded to Temple alumnus/adjunct

Cohen

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named School of Pharmacy alumnus and adjunct professor Michael Cohen among 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2005. Each fellow will be given $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

MacArthur Fellows are selected for their creativity, originality and potential. By providing resources without stipulations or reporting requirements, the MacArthur Foundation offers the opportunity for fellows to accelerate their current activities or take their work in new directions.

Cohen is a pharmacist with a passion for patient safety and a commitment to reducing preventable drug and drug delivery mistakes that cause the death of thousands of people each year in the United States. An early pioneer in the international movement to address medication error, Cohen is founder and president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit clearinghouse for the distribution of impartial medical safety information to the healthcare community.

For more than three decades, Cohen has played key roles in bringing about numerous corrections in error-prone products and practices. Today, he continues to be a major force in giving national visibility to the ubiquitous and serious problem of medication errors.

As the number of available drugs and prescriptions filled each year continues to soar, many with look-alike or sound-alike names, Cohen is a recognized leader in promoting increased consumer vigilance, drug industry accountability and practitioner responsibility. Through the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which he founded in 1993, Cohen has championed improvements in drug naming, labeling, packaging, delivery systems and regulation.

As the cornerstone of his efforts, Cohen co-founded the continuous, voluntary and confidential Medication Error Reporting Program (now administered by U.S. Pharmacopoeia), for medical professionals to learn about and understand the causes of errors across the nation. Where once errors were undisclosed and viewed as embarrassing to the healthcare industry, the active collection of these reports has helped generate practical and early responses and to combat potentially widespread and dangerous outcomes.

Peter Doukas, dean of the School of Pharmacy, told The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sept. 20 that most hospitals around the nation now do an annual review of their pharmaceutical systems because of Cohen’s work. Doukas was a graduate student at the Pharmacy School when Cohen was an undergraduate.

Cohen received his bachelor’s (1968) and master’s (1984) degrees from Temple. Since 1976, he has taught at the School of Pharmacy, where he is now an adjunct associate professor. He is editor of the book Medication Errors (1999), and co-editor of the newsletter ISMP Medication Safety Alert!

- By Eryn Jelesiewicz