Miriam Cohen, MD

Miriam Cohen, MD, is a pediatrician and medical director of the Pediatric Primary Care Center at Yale New Haven Health’s Bridgeport Hospital.

Growing up, Dr. Cohen thought she might want to become a teacher until she got interested in science while in college.

“I loved biology and genetics and had the opportunity to work on an ambulance as an EMT, and fell in love with that,” Dr. Cohen says. “I’d been a lifeguard and camp counselor, so working with kids was also something that was natural to me.”

Still, when she went to medical school, she wasn’t sure what she would specialize in—until she did her pediatric rotation. “I just knew that was for me. I especially loved working with adolescents because of the idea that you could make a difference in someone’s life,” she says. “I like being able to give kids knowledge about making their own choices on how to live a healthy life.”

But it hasn’t been a straight path to her current role as medical director. Dr. Cohen joined the United States Navy and served five years of active duty, followed by four years in the Reserves. After medical school, she attended her pediatric internship at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center and then moved onto training at the Naval Undersea Medical Institute and Navy Dive School. She became an undersea medical officer, Navy diver and eventually a board-certified undersea and hyperbaric medicine specialist.

While she isn’t using that training in her work now, she says she enjoys her administrative duties at the Primary Care Center, in addition to working with children and their families. “I wanted a job where I felt like I could make a meaningful difference in people’s lives and for the Bridgeport community,” she says. “What I love about primary care is you can really engage with kids. If they are young, you can be funny and silly. If they are older, you can talk more directly to them and find out what their interests are.”

Dr. Cohen’s research interests include how anxiety affects concussions, and whether there should be an adolescent booster for the hepatitis B vaccine.