George Rosen Prize

The George Rosen Prize is awarded in odd years to one or more authors/creators of an article, essay, edited volume, museum exhibition, film, or other significant contribution to the history of public health or the history of social medicine published or created in the five calendar years preceding the award’s nomination deadline, i.e. from 2020 to 2024.

“Social medicine” here refers to historical efforts to heal, relieve, or prevent diseases arising inherently from social circumstances and is intended to be distinct from the “social history of medicine.” In this context, “social” refers to the perspective of the historical actors and not to the perspective or methods of the historian.

Historical monographs are recognized in even years while articles, edited volumes, or museum exhibitions, films, or other significant works are eligible in odd years. The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, in Buffalo, New York, June 4-7, 2026.

The award is named in honor of George Rosen, physician, public health administrator, past-president of the AAHM, and a major contributor to the history of social medicine. The AAHM Council established the award in 2014 thanks to the generosity of Susan Rosen Koslow.

Submissions for 2025-26 have closed. (Deadline: Friday, December 3, 2025)

Rosen Prize Committee, 2025-2026

Wayne Soon, Chair
Andrew Lea
Julia Rodriguez
Emily Novak
Yang Li

This year, the Committee will consider monographs only.

Publishers interested in nominating a monograph must provide a copy to each member of the committee.

For mailing addresses for submissions, please email the Chair of the George Rosen Prize Committee, Wayne Soon at [email protected].

Past Recipients:

2025: Nursing Clio

2024: Sydney Halpern, Dangerous Medicines: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis (Yale University Press, 2021)

2023: Michelle Browder, The Mothers of Gynecology

2022: Arleen M. Tuchman, Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale University Press, 2020)

2021: Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielsen The Oxford Handbook of Disability History (Oxford University Press, 2018)

2020: Guillaume Lachenal The Lomidine Files: The Untold Story of a Medical Disaster (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017)

2019: Sarah Leavitt, curator “Architecture of an Asylum: St Elizabeth’s 1852-2017”, National Building Museum, Washington, DC

2018: Nükhet Varlik, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

2017: Marcos Cueto and Steven Palmer, Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

2016: Erica Charters, Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years’ War (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

2015: Margaret Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)

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