Meet the 2026 Awardee: Rachel Kohn, MD, MSCE, ATSF
Dr. Rachel Kohn is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care and Core Faculty at the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). She is a pulmonologist and intensivist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
Dr. Kohn’s research intersects health services and healthcare delivery equity, surrounding inpatient care delivery and representativeness in prospective research. She was awarded an NHLBI/NIH R01 to develop, validate, and demonstrate the impact of a novel in-hospital mortality prediction model that performs as well as commonly used models, but that performs more equitably across sociodemographic characteristics. She is also PI of one of three projects of an American Heart Association Strategically Focused Research Network Grant evaluating the science of diversity in clinical trials. Additionally, she is evaluating the novel long-term survivorship construct of dignity among acute respiratory failure survivors.
Since joining ATS in 2016, Dr. Kohn has been a dedicated member of the BSHSR Assembly. She has served as a co-chair, facilitator, or discussant for eight BSHSR programs. She also served on the Early Career Professionals Working Group (ECPWG; 2018-2020), Science and Innovation Center (2020-2022), and Program (2020-2023; 2026-), Planning (inaugural Apprentice 2019; full member 2020-2024), and Nominations (2023-2024) Committees, in addition to being a Critical Care Assembly ECPWG Co-Chair (2022-2024). She has participated in the BSHSR and Critical Care mentor-mentee programs since joining ATS.
Dr. Kohn is the faculty lead of the Joint Research Practices (JRP), a Penn work group developing and disseminating best practices and guidelines for the conduct of inclusive and accessible research, created in 2021. In 2025, the JRP received the Penn Models of Excellence Award celebrating extraordinary achievements of university staff. Dr. Kohn was selected as an ATS Fellow in 2025, received Society of Critical Care Medicine Presidential Citations in 2022 and 2023, was awarded the Donald B. Martin Department of Medicine Teaching Service Award in 2020, and received the Holmes Award for best abstract by an early career clinical research faculty member from Penn’s Department of Medicine in 2019. Her mentees have received numerous awards for work performed under her mentorship.
After graduating from Penn undergraduate and medical schools, Dr. Kohn completed Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Penn. During fellowship, she completed a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology.n.
Description
The award will be given to an early career individual who has made outstanding scientific and scholarly contributions relevant to behavioral and social sciences, clinical epidemiology, statistics, health services research, health economics, comparative clinical efficacy and effectiveness research, patient-centered outcomes research, performance measurement, quality improvement, or implementation science. This award is to recognize individuals who have applied these methodologies to lung diseases, critical illness, or sleep disorders early in their career, and who have made significant contributions to the BSHSR Assembly and the ATS as a whole. The award committee encourages nominations from groups who are under-represented in medicine. Awardees will be presented with a framed certificate at the ATS International Conference. For guidance regarding whether a nominee is more appropriate for the Emerging or Early Award category, please reach out to the BSHSR Planning Committee Chair ahead of the submission deadline.
Criteria
- Instructor, Assistant Professor, or an equivalent rank in a non-academic institution
- Within 10 years of completing all post-doctoral or clinical training, excluding time off for personal circumstances
- Current BSHSR member (primary or secondary membership)
- Has not previously received an Early Career Achievement award from any ATS assembly
- Cannot concurrently be nominated for an Emerging Career award
- The submission package must include the candidate’s updated curriculum vitae and a nomination letter from an assembly member addressing the candidate’s achievements within the scored award domains.
Scoring
Applicants are scored on 6 criteria using a 1-5 rating system across the following categories; summed scores provide an overall score:
- Scientific and scholarly contributions/products
- Teaching/mentoring/educational contributions
- Participation in BSHSR Assembly activities (administrative, committees, workshops, etc.)
- Participation in other ATS activities (administrative, committees, workshops, etc.)
- Other considerations from recommendations including relevant extenuating circumstances
- Overall impact/impression of the dossier submitted for award application