Title: Chairman
Company: Lee Health
Location: Ft. Myers, Florida, United States
Sanford “Sandy” N. Cohen, MD TP, chairman at Lee Health, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Doctors for dedication, achievements, and leadership in pediatrics.
Dr. Cohen is a board-certified pediatrician, researcher and professor emeritus at the Wayne State University School of Medicine celebrating nearly 40 years of excellence in practice. A curious student with a passion for science, he knew by the time he entered high school that he wanted to become a physician and attended Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1956 and a Doctor of Medicine in 1960. Dr. Cohen remained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital until 1963 to complete his internship and residency in pediatrics.
For the next two years, Dr. Cohen served in the U.S. Army, who assigned him through the Thai embassy to set up and run nutritional surveys and help establish a research hospital for children in Southeastern Thailand. His work was instrumental in the creation of a treatment that reduced the area’s malnutrition mortality rate, which dropped from 50% to 10%. Dr. Cohen returned to the United States in 1965 to accept an instructor position at the New York University School of Medicine, where he would rise to become an associate professor and continue to teach until 1974.
In 1974, Dr. Cohen was named as the chair of pediatrics at Wayne State University School of Medicine and the pediatrician in chief of the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. The following year, he also became the director of the Child Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine, a position he held concurrently until 1981, when he transitioned into a more academically-focused administrative role as the school’s associate dean. Through the 1980s, Dr. Cohen acted as the director of the Developmental Disability Institute at Wayne State University and adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan School of Health. Dr. Cohen was named a provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1986, and returned to teaching full-time as a professor of pediatrics for several years before earning emeritus status in 1998.
Since his academic retirement, Dr. Cohen has held executive and advisory positions for such institutions as Florida Gulf Coast University, the Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida and the Children’s Medical Research Institute. He has contributed extensively to professional journals, served as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, and is the editor of “Progress in Drug Therapy in Children,” which published in 1981. In recognition of his career-spanning contributions to his patients, students and profession, Dr. Cohen has been honored with the John and Mary R. Markle Scholar-in-Medicine Award, which he considers a professional highlight. He also won an award from the Florida Hospital Association in 2019, and several accolades for service to the community. Dr. Cohen remains affiliated with the Society for Pediatric Research and is a past president of the Senior and Retired Physicians Association.
For more information, please visit:
Lee Health Board of Directors Profile
Contact Dr. Cohen
