TUCSON, Ariz., July 29, 2010 – The Muscular Dystrophy Association has named Fern Cohen of Rego Park the recipient of its 2010 Robert Ross Personal Achievement Award for Metropolitan New York.
Cohen, 55, was selected for MDA’s highest achievement award in Metropolitan New York for her community service and work on behalf of others with disabilities.
Cohen has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). ALS destroys the nerves that control voluntary muscles, eventually resulting in paralysis. Average survival time after diagnosis is three to five years. She uses a power wheelchair for mobility and a voice augmentation device for speech communications.
Cohen taught English, French and Spanish as a second language to high school students in the inner-city area of East Harlem. She said the challenges of teaching severely economically disadvantaged students helped her deal with the challenges of ALS when she learned she had the disease in 2004.
Long before her ALS diagnosis, Cohen was an energetic supporter of charitable causes to help people with diseases such as polio and AIDS. Now she is an equally energetic supporter of MDA’s efforts to find treatments and a cure for ALS. She is an active and comforting presence at the MDA ALS monthly support group meetings in the city.
“I’m very pleased to recognize Fern Cohen as Metropolitan New York’s Robert Ross MDA Personal Achievement Award recipient for 2010,” said MDA President & CEO Gerald C. Weinberg. “Her work is a real asset to Metropolitan New York and an example of the kind of leadership MDA is proud to support.”
About the award
Cohen was selected as Metropolitan New York’s state recipient after having been selected for a local achievement award by MDA’s Tri-Borough Long Island Chapter.
Cohen will accept the award during the local broadcast of the 2010 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon on Sept. 6 on My9 in New York City.
One person will be selected from among all the state honorees around the country and named MDA’s national 2011 Robert Ross Personal Achievement Award recipient. The national award recipient will be announced on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, broadcast Sept. 5-6.
The award is named in memory of Robert Ross, MDA’s longtime chief executive who died in 2006. Ross created the Personal Achievement Award program in 1992 to recognize the exemplary accomplishments and community service of people who have any of the 40-plus neuromuscular diseases for which MDA seeks treatments and cures.
John Quinlan, a medical doctor from Lakeside Park, Ky., is MDA’s 2010 national award recipient. Quinlan, who has facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, also is director of the MDA clinic at the University of Cincinnati.
For more information please contact Jenny Vidoni, healthcare service coordinator at jvidoni@mdausa.org or Alexandra Giorgio, public affairs coordinator at agiorgio@mdausa.org. For more information on the award recipients please visit http://www.mda.org/commprog/paa/.
MDA is the nonprofit health agency dedicated to curing muscular dystrophy, ALS and related diseases by funding worldwide research. The Association also provides comprehensive health care and support services, advocacy and education.
In the New York metro area, MDA maintains clinics at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and Columbia University Medical Center, NYU Elaine A. and Kenneth G. Langone Medical Center, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell and the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig MDA/ALS Research Center, all in New York.
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