Meet the Winner of VNS Health’s Newest Award:  Social Services Professional of the Year!

VNS Health has created a brand-new award to honor our amazing social services team members—the Social Services Professional of the Year Award. Nearly 50 team members were nominated for this first-time award. To see the full list of nominees, click here.

And now, the winner of the 2025 Social Services Professional of the Year Award is (drumroll please) … Elizabeth “Lizzie” Cogan!

A social worker with our Brooklyn Home Care team, Lizzie was chosen for showing exceptional initiative and enthusiasm in her commitment to achieving the best possible outcomes for her patients, as well as for embodying VNS Health’s Core Values of Empathy, Agility and Integrity.

“What I love most about my job,” says Lizzie, “is that I’m able to change a patient’s life in concrete ways, like connecting them with transportation to a doctor’s appointment—but I can also help them on a deeper level. A big part of every visit is tuning in to who they are as a person and deeply understanding all that they are going through. Both sides are so important, and I love that I get to help people with both.”

Lizzie demonstrates empathy, agility and integrity to her patients and their families every day she’s on the job. A colleague describes how Lizzie supported a young mother with a terminal medical condition. “Lizzie went above and beyond to connect the children, aged 3, 12 and 15, with every possible community service,” her colleague says. “She also communicated with the medical team regularly, made additional home visits for follow-up for support and counselling, and provided resources to the spouse, who was having difficulty coping. Lizzie is one of the most mindful and forward-thinking social workers that I have had the pleasure of working with.”

Another team member recalls how Lizzie called her to a case conference regarding a patient in VNS Health’s Gender Affirmation Program (GAP) who was recovering from gender affirmation surgery. “Lizzie discussed how she was concerned for the patient’s safety in the home,” the colleague remembers. “She then came up with a solution to safely meet with the patient outside of their home to assess and provide the most appropriate care and make sure the patient did not experience any further harm. I respect Lizzie so much for her skills, talent, and knowledge.”

In addition to her work with home care patients in Brooklyn, Lizzie helped start VNS Health’s Social Services Community of Professionals (SSCoP), which was founded in 2022 to connect social workers to each other and to information and resources that will elevate, strengthen and empower them and their work. The SSCoP originated during the COVID pandemic as a way to bridge the isolation that social workers were feeling both from the pandemic in general, and from working one-on-one in people’s homes.

“The SSCoP helps us to see beyond our own individual contributor role, and to see how we fit into the enterprise as a whole,” says Lizzie, who served as SSCoP’s first chairperson. “VNS Health is a great historical agency that embraces innovation, and it’s led the way in recognizing that delivering care goes beyond the physical and medical side of things. There is a lot of momentum across health care for valuing the social service professional skill set and our whole person perspective.”

One of the initiatives Lizzie is proudest of is an SSCoP training she helped create called Reflective Listening. “Reflective Listening is the clinical skill that delivers empathy in a professional way,” she says. “Believe it or not, social workers are not always born knowing these skills. It is a professional skill that can be taught. The training helps connect the dots between our high-level value of empathy and how we can actually deliver it in the field.”

Lizzie came to social work as a second career, having started her adult life as a fashion designer. She learned about VNS Health from her husband, who was a nurse practitioner in Hospice and Palliative Care. Drawn to social work’s power to make measurable change in people’s lives, Lizzie says, “It is such a privilege to be able to walk in the door of someone’s home, knowing that by the time I leave I’ll have made a difference in their lives in several ways. That’s what keeps me coming back.”

In her typically collaborative spirit, Lizzie says she is grateful for and humbled by the award—and she can’t wait to see who gets it next. “I’m very happy that we now have a Social Services Professional of the Year Award, and I’m delighted to be recognized and appreciated,” she notes. “But I am very much not alone in the good work that we do.”