Sally S Cohen

Sally Cohen, PhD, RN, PNP, FAAN is a Clinical Professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Her interdisciplinary scholarship spans nursing, child health, public health, and political science. She teaches graduate nursing courses in health policy and “issues and trends in nursing and health care.” Prof Cohen has chaired many PhD dissertation and DNP Project committees.

Prof. Cohen’s most recent scholarship focuses on systems of care for children and youth with special health care needs. In particular, she studies health issues in education transitions for young children with developmental behavioral disabilities.

Prior to joining the faculty at NYU Meyers, Cohen was Distinguished Nurse Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute of Medicine (now the Academy of Medicine), Before that, she directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nursing and Health Policy Collaborative at the University of New Mexico. She has held tenured faculty positions at Yale and the University of New Mexico. At Yale, she developed and directed the Nursing Management, Policy, and Leadership specialty, which was the precursor to Yale’s DNP program. She also was on the executive committee of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. As director of policy and research at the National League of Nursing, Cohen helped advocate for legislation that in 1985 established the National Institute of Nursing Research. She has also practiced as an RN and a PNP.

Among her many honors, Cohen received the Ellen Rudy Clore Excellence in Writing Award from the Journal of Pediatric Health Care (2023,1998), the Lois Capps Policy Luminary Award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and was honored by Yale School of Nursing with its “90 Outstanding Yale Nurses” award. She received the Kaplan-Landy Award for Vision, Innovation, and Leadership from the Hadassah Nurses Council and was elected to the American Academy of Nursing in 1988. She received the Marisa de Castro Benton Prize, for an outstanding dissertation in Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University

Cohen earned her PhD from Columbia University, MSN from Yale University, and BA from Cornell University.