[1] The CHDS was founded with a commitment to research and understand how health and disease are passed on from one generation to the next, taking into account biological, environmental, and social factors.
Cohn maintains an active research program with a focus on how environmental chemicals affect reproductive health, how exposure to certain chemicals in the womb can affect a child's risk of disease, and how pregnancy protects women from developing breast cancer.
[1] Her group has found that prenatal exposure to DDT—an insecticide that became infamous for its negative environmental impacts after Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring—is linked to increase risk of breast cancer.
[3] The study focused on assessing the risk of breast cancer among a cohort of 9,300 women born in the United States between 1959 and 1967—a period when DDT use was common in the country.
Cohn also led the team that uncovered several pregnancy complications that can increase the long-term risk of death from cardiovascular disease.