Molly Cooke, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, has been appointed the first GHS Director of Education. Dr. Cooke, who will begin her transition to GHS in March, will officially step down from her role as the director of the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators in June.

A leading expert on medical education and educational research as well an acclaimed teacher, she has twice received the Kaiser Family Foundation Teaching Award as well as a UCSF Academic Senate Award for Distinction in Teaching. In 2006, she was awarded the AOA/Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC); in 2010, she received the Career Achievement Award in Education from the Society for General Internal Medicine.

“I am tremendously excited to be joining GHS,” said Cooke. “My very first medical experience, as a teenager, was in an isolated and completely underserved Inuit community in northern Labrador. I spent five months working in rural Guatemala before starting my medical internship. It will be a privilege to work with global health leaders on the UCSF campus and beyond, using education to address health inequities worldwide.”

“Dr. Cooke will make an excellent addition to the GHS team,” said GHS Executive Director Jaime Sepulveda in announcing the appointment. “We are very fortunate to be able to leverage her expertise and experience in medical education at UCSF. She will be an invaluable asset as we grow our global health education programs, building on the strong foundation already put in place by a small group of dedicated UCSF faculty.”

GHS already boasts several global health education programs, including the nation’s first Masters of Science degree in Global Health Sciences, which has been under the direction of John Ziegler, MD, MSc since its launch in 2008. GHS also offers a Pathway to Discovery in Global Health track, which is open to all UCSF students and provides in-depth study and experience to prepare health professionals for global health careers. The GHS Clinical Scholars Program provides specialized training for UCSF residents, scholars, fellows, and postgraduate students who want to formally incorporate global health into their clinical and research training, as well as their careers. GHS also runs a complex humanitarian emergency (CHE) leadership training, an experiential inter-professional full-day exercise for global health trainees to develop and hone their skills. Christopher Stewart, MD, oversees the Pathway, Clinical Scholars and CHE programs.

In the new GHS role, Cooke will bring a vision and direction to the development of innovative global health educational offerings, including degree and certificate programs, faculty development, distance education courses, and expansion of an inter-professional global health curriculum across UCSF’s schools. She will collaborate with Ziegler and Stewart as they continue directing their existing programs.

Dr. Cooke currently holds the William G. Irwin Endowed Chair as the Director of the Academy of Medical Educators. She is a practicing internist with a special interest in HIV and other complex chronic illnesses. She will become President-elect of the American College of Physicians (ACP) in April having served as Governor of the Northern California chapter of the ACP from 2004 to 2009. Cooke has advised the AMA, ACP, and the American Association of Medical Colleges on clinical care and ethical and policy issues in the HIV epidemic, and was a founding co-director of the AIDS Task Force of the Society for General Internal Medicine. She testified before both National Commissions on AIDS (1988 and 1990). She was a Department of Health and Human Services Primary Care Health Policy Fellow in 2004 and has been repeatedly selected by her peers as one of “America’s Best Doctors.”

As a Senior Scholar of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Cooke co-directed a national study of medical education that culminated in the publication of Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency, co-authored with Drs. David Irby and Bridget O’Brien, and published in June 2010 by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Dr. Cooke is a graduate of Stanford University. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine. She did her residency training at UCSF, where she also served as chief resident in medicine and did a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellowship focusing on ethics.