The Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania has served thousands of veterans and their families since its founding in 2016. But following a tumultuous year for Penn, the Cohen Clinic was shut down in August 2024.

The clinic was the result of a partnership between Penn Medicine and Cohen Veterans Network, a philanthropic organization created by 1978 Wharton graduate and hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen. Former employees and patients of the clinic told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the closure left veterans in Pennsylvania and New Jersey without a crucial source of care.

“We’re scrambling,” Darcel Rideout, a former veteran patient of the Cohen Clinic who later served on its advisory board, said. “[The closure] not only impacts the veterans in the community, but it impacts the family members, the caretakers, and everyone else who wants to support veterans.”

“We were disappointed in the decision to discontinue funding to Penn’s Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic, and across Penn Medicine, we remain committed to a wide array of health care services and partnerships to support veterans,” a Penn Med spokesperson wrote to the DP.

According to its website, Cohen Veterans Network is a national nonprofit focused on helping post-9/11 veterans “overcome the challenges of transition from active military service back to civilian life and beyond.” The model for CVN clinics like Penn’s was to provide confidential specialized therapy for military veterans and their families.

Following a $275 million donation by Cohen to CVN, the group opened over 20 clinics between 2016 and 2023. 

At the Cohen Clinic’s opening ceremony in 2016, then-Penn President Amy Gutmann noted Penn’s “long history of supporting veterans” and praised the clinic as a continuation of that effort.

According to former Cohen Clinic Faculty Director and Perelman School of Medicine professor David Oslin, the clinic was initially fully funded by CVN, but contractual changes forced the clinic to independently fundraise a certain percentage of their annual expenses.

“The model became less of a full philanthropy model and more of a shared financial burden model, and that was complicated to pull off,” Oslin said. 

Pete Whitney, a veteran who previously served as the clinic’s outreach director noted that the size of Penn’s endowment and Cohen’s net worth made it difficult to attract potential donors to the clinic but that there was little worry among members of the clinic that CVN was going to stop funding the clinic.

“I was told that as long as there was a good faith effort by the clinic to raise these funds, Mr. Cohen wasn’t going to shut anybody down,” said Whitney. 

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In February 2024 — as Penn was reeling from ongoing donor backlash over former Penn President Liz Magill’s response to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, subsequent resignation and allegations of antisemitism — Oslin received a phone call from CVN informing him that they would not be renewing the clinic’s funding beginning in the fall of that year. 

“CVN regularly evaluates the operating model and impact of the network to ensure we are delivering care where it is needed most and to best steward donor dollars,” a CVN spokesperson wrote to the DP. “We shifted to a telehealth model in Philadelphia given the clinic demand for in-person services was not sufficient to justify a bricks and mortar clinic."

While Oslin admitted that the decision was “hastily decided” given that the clinic had been in operation for over seven years, he declined to speculate further about CVN’s reason for withdrawing.

However, other former Cohen Clinic employees said it was clear to them that criticisms of Penn’s response to allegations of antisemitism played a role in the closure.

“I’m sure of it,” Whitney said when asked if he thought backlash against Penn contributed to CVN’s funding withdrawal. “I don’t think it was the sole reason, though I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Another former Clinic employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, noted that in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, there was a distinct change in CVN’s attitude towards Penn and the Cohen Clinic.

“[The clinic] didn’t have contact with senior [CVN] leadership after the beginning of October,” the former employee said. “It was a very, very significant tone shift.”

The former employee also stated that, while financial concerns and changing aspects of CVN’s model likely contributed to the closure, its abrupt nature was “driven by politics.” In particular, they noted — despite the outstanding care typically given by CVN — the way Penn’s closure was handled “destabilized the experience” for clinic patients.

“We got three months to wind down the clinic. That’s just absolutely inappropriate care,” the former employee said. “It really created a picture of instability when what people need from their care system is stability.”

A CVN spokesperson said that the decision to withdraw funding from the clinic had “nothing to do with political issues.”

Following CVN’s withdrawal, the clinic sought alternative funding to remain operational, including securing financial support from the Pennsylvania General Assembly. As part of this effort, clinic leaders and Penn officials held a series of meetings with state legislators in late spring and early summer of 2024. 

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However, these meetings ultimately failed to secure funding.

“We went to the state and heard very adamantly that investing in an academic institution was not something the state was interested in doing, given the environment,” said Oslin, who noted that this request to the state occurred in June 2024, following the disbandment of Penn’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

“This would be a lot easier if this money wasn’t going to a university,” Oslin recalled one state legislator telling him.

Another former employee of the clinic agreed that there was “a lot of hesitance” in these conversations.

“People were feeling really skeptical about including Penn in the budget specifically because of what was happening on campus at the time,” the employee added. 

Rideout stated that she was confused by the Commonwealth’s denial of the clinic’s funding request.

“I have no idea why funding would be so firmly denied, especially for a service that is going to help veterans and their family members and has been doing it for the last eight years,” Rideout said.

In December 2023 — months prior to these meetings — the Pennsylvania House of Representatives had voted to withhold funding for Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Penn Med’s Division of Infectious Diseases when antisemitism concerns spread throughout campus and the Penn community.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Joe Webster (D-Montgomery), a longtime supporter of the clinic, attributed the inability of the clinic to get state funding to the narrow time frame and size of the request — which he says was in the range of $2 million. 

Webster also stated that he did not believe his colleagues in the Pennsylvania General Assembly denied the clinic funding due to concerns about antisemitism at Penn, but rather that the request was “swamped by other issues.” However, he acknowledged that media attention surrounding Penn’s encampment “certainly didn’t help the Cohen Clinic.”

After not being able to secure funding from the Pennsylvania General Assembly or other sources, the Cohen Clinic closed on Aug. 31, 2024 — immediately affecting around 600 veterans and their families across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, according to Whitney. 

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Rideout also discussed her personal experiences with the clinic as a former patient, emphasizing the importance of the clinic in her life after her service in the military.

“I would probably not be sitting here speaking to you today had it not been for the clinic and those services being there for me,” said Rideout.

Rideout also said that the closure of the clinic left her family without an important resource after her older son was “murdered in the streets of Philadelphia,” at 17 years of age, just 11 days after the clinic closed.

“Had the Cohen Clinic been there, it would have been a valuable resource for my family — especially my younger son,” said Rideout.

Whitney agreed that there is “definitely going to be a vacuum” left behind by the Cohen Clinic closure. 

“There are a lot of professions where [veterans] just don’t want to come forward for something that happened while they were in service,” said Whitney. “They don’t want anyone else that they work with to know about it, much less their boss.”

“We ensured continuity of care for all patients who were receiving services through the Cohen Clinic when we learned of this funding decision, and have provided resources to ensure that this patient population has access to resources both through Penn Medicine programs and outside of Penn,” the Penn Med spokesperson wrote.

The CVN spokesperson wrote that the organization “put a plan in place that is now complete to ensure all existing clients could complete their course of treatment in-person or by telehealth as they chose.”

While Oslin and Whitney noted that alternative resources exist, such as the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Easter Seals, they do not provide the same level of support that Penn’s Cohen Clinic once provided.

“It’s just not seen as part of the community,” Oslin said. “It’s not the same resource.”

“There’s absolutely nothing on par with what [the clinic] was,” Whitney said.