LARRY COHEN, MSW

Executive Director
Prevention Institute

Larry Cohen, MSW, Prevention Institute founder and Executive Director, has been an advocate for public health and prevention since 1972. An important focus of his work has been to develop local policies that support health and wellness and spur legislation at the state and federal levels. He was the founding director of the Contra Costa County Prevention Program, which is recognized for its systems approach in bringing together county health agencies and community service organizations. While at Contra Costa County, he formed the first coalition in the nation to change tobacco policy, engaging the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association in the nation’s first multi-city smoking ban. The coalition successfully passed local anti-smoking ordinances and served as a catalyst for other statewide and national efforts including smoking bans on airplanes and restrictions in public places, restaurants, and workplaces. In addition to playing a key role in tobacco policy, Mr. Cohen established the Food and Nutrition Policy Consortium, whose work led to a county food policy and helped catalyze the nation's food labeling law. He also helped shape strategy to secure passage of bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws, strengthen child and adult passenger restraint laws, and establish fluoridation requirements in California.

Mr. Cohen has also done extensive work related to health disparities, including the California Campaign to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health, and THRIVE: Tool for Health and Resilience In Vulnerable Environments, a web-based tool designed to help communities identify and foster factors in the community environment that will improve health outcomes and reduce disparities experienced by racial and ethnic minorities. Mr. Cohen also participated in a series of Focus Forums across the country, in which Prevention Institute gathered regional input to shape national injury prevention strategy for SafeUSA. He served as co-principal investigator of Partnerships for Preventing Violence in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health. Mr. Cohen has trained and written nationally on primary prevention of gender violence including Sexual Violence and the Spectrum of Prevention: Towards a Community Solution. He also helped to define violence as a preventable, public health issue, and developed one of the nation's first courses on violence prevention at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health. He has created tools and frameworks to help communities develop effective prevention strategy, including the Spectrum of Prevention, which has been used nationally in numerous prevention initiatives, and Developing Effective Coalitions: An Eight Step Guide.

Mr. Cohen has authored many publications related to expanding primary prevention practice and promoting comprehensive strategies to improve public health, including The Spectrum of Prevention: Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Injury Prevention, Comprehensive Prevention: Improving Health Outcomes through Practice, and Beyond Brochures: New Approaches to Prevention. He is also the co-editor for Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing, an academic text with a unique focus on prevention, which will be published by Jossey Bass in March 2007.  Prevention is Primary moves practitioners from the margins of prevention to its core, and frames prevention as an essential component of health by identifying best practices and illustrating the application of prevention principles by a variety of professionals in a multitude of settings.  He is the recipient of numerous awards, including recognition from the American Cancer Society and the Society for Public Health Educators, and the Secretary's Award for Health Promotion from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He received his masters in social work from the State University of New York, Stony Brook.