Lois K. Cohen, PhD
Philadelphia-born and educated at the Philadelphia High School for Girls (1956) and the University of Pennsylvania (1960), Dr. Lois Cohen earned her M.S. (1961) and Ph.D in sociology at Purdue University (1963). After serving as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Howard University in Washington, DC, Dr. Cohen began her federal government career as a research sociologist in the Division of Dental Health of the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare. During her 42-year career, she edited and authored 4 books on the social sciences and dentistry, published more than 120 professional journal articles. She co-directed the World Health Organization (WHO) International Collaborative Study of Dental Manpower Systems in relation to Oral Health Status, a study in 10 industrialized countries, and was involved in facilitating the design and conduct of the WHO International Collaborative Study of Oral Health Outcomes, published in 1997.
She has served sequentially in a number of senior federal executive roles as Special Assistant to directors of the Division of Dentistry as well as the National Institute of Dental Research, Planning Officer, Evaluation Officer, Chief of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Communications, Director of the Division of Extramural Research, Director of the Office of International Health, and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research. Dr. Cohen additionally served as a consultant to the Institute of Medicine, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, WHO, the Pan American Health Organization, American Dental Association, the Federation Dentaire Internationale. Active in professional associations, she served as a founding member and President of Behavioral Scientists in Dental Research, International Association of Dental Research (IADR), served on the Board of Directors of both the American & IADR and currently serves on Editorial Boards of the Journal of the American Dental Association, African Journal of Oral Health, and the Middle East Journal of Oral Health. She recently initiated a regular column in the continuing education journal for dentists, Compendium, entitled “Global Health Through Oral Health.
Dr. Cohen currently serves on various organization boards including: Foundation Against HIV/AIDS in Africa, the Friends of the Organization of Safety and Asepsis Procedures, Edward B. Shils Educational Entrepreneurial Fund-Program Advisory Board, D. Walter Cohen Middle East Center for Dental Education- Advisory Committee, and the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health & Arthritis of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Recipient of numerous honors in federal service and for her professional and scholarly achievements, she was awarded Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Purdue University, the first sociologist so honored by that university. NIH paid tribute to her with a symposium, “The Integral Role of Behavioral and Social Science in a Systems Approach to Oral Health Research” and a new award has been created in her name to assist researchers from developing countries to attend an IADR meeting. Her career has been chronicled in a video interview that is among the archived series, Leaders in Dentistry, National Museum of Dentistry and in the Journal of Dental Research (1999), “The Emergence of the Social Sciences in Dentistry: Lois Cohen as Principal Architect”.