2020 Candidate Profiles Active Members – Vote on-line August 21-September 20 On-line balloting for four positions on the CNS Executive Committee will be conducted August 21-September 20. Below are profiles written by the candidates themselves, with responses from President-Elect candidates to additional questions posed by the Nominating Committee.
PRESIDENT-ELECT
Bruce H. Cohen, MD, FAAN
I am currently the Director of the NeuroDevelopmental Science Center at Akron Children’s Hospital and am the Medical Director of the hospital’s Research Institute. I hold the titles of Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Integrative Medical Sciences (Physiology) at Northeast Ohio Medical University. I spent the first two decades of my career at The Cleveland Clinic before moving to my current position and have practiced in a high-volume clinical practice before transitioning currently to a blended practice involving both translational and clinical trials research. For the last five years I have assumed administrative duties including strategic planning and managing over 60 providers and 200 employees in six divisions. I was born in St. Louis, and graduated Washington University (Summa Cum Laude). I attended medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and fell in love with child neurology under the watchful eyes of Isabelle Rapin and Al Spiro. Following pediatric residency at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), I trained in child neurology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in neurooncology at CHOP. I have focused my clinical and academic career in neuro-oncology, neurofibromatosis and mitochondrial medicine. My career path has also taken me into the area of business management, health care policy, and payment models. In the early 1990s I walked into a CNS Practice Committee meeting and was quickly assigned the task of understanding the nuances of the newly written E/M CPT codes, and then represented the CNS in a
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Child Neurology Society | Summer 2020/Special Issue
project that became the CPT 1997 Single System exam. In 2006 I assumed the chair of the Practice Committee where I had the opportunity to both stumble and learn. The AAN recruited me simultaneously to serve on both the coding and practice committees, which gave me deeper exposure to guideline development, quality, business management, healthcare policy, and hospital department finances. My term as chair of the CNS Practice Committee ended and then I was elected as CNS Councillor for the Midwest, and most recently as Secretary-Treasurer. I served in elected leadership positions as Chairman of the AAN Child Neurology Section, as President of the Professors of Child Neurology (PCN), and as President of the Mitochondrial Medicine Society. For the last decade I have been appointed by the AAN as the Advisor to the AMA’s CPT Panel, which involves working with all other medical professional organizations, and assisting in the authorship of telemedicine codes and the 2021 E/M codes. I have 120 peer-reviewed publications, 650 invited lectures, 40 chapters, and one book that I co-edited with two prior students. I am an Associate Editor for Mitochondrian and Continuum and serve on the editorial board for Pediatric Neurology. I have been married to my wife and best friend Anna for almost 18 years and we have two terrific kids aged 14 and 16. Anna helps me fine a balance in life. We love decorating, biking and family travel. I also have two older children, one an internal medicine resident and one in a PhD program.
