Molly Cooke, MD, MACP

10Molly Cooke, MD, MACP, Professor of Medicine, is the inaugural director of education for Global Health Sciences across the five UCSF schools (Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, and the Graduate Division), charged with developing a portfolio of high impact educational programs for UCSF students, residents, fellows, post-docs, and faculty members and devising innovative and high value ways to share UCSF’s expertise in discovery science, health care delivery, professional education, and basic science with international partners.

Dr. Cooke has been active in medical education program development and educational research throughout her career. A distinguished teacher, Dr. Cooke has received numerous teaching awards including, in 2006, the AOA/Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges. As a Senior Scholar of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, she co-directed a national study of medical education. This work culminated in the text, Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency (2010).

Dr. Cooke has used education and faculty development to address the health problems of underserved populations throughout her career. A founding faculty member of the internal medicine residency at San Francisco General Hospital – UCSF, she developed GME curricula focused on the care of the urban under-served. She serves on the Training Advisory Committee of the University of Zimbabwe Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Accordia Global Health Foundation and the Infectious Diseases Institute of Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

Dr. Cooke is a practicing internist with a special interest in HIV and other complex chronic illnesses. She has been repeatedly selected by her peers as one of “America’s Best Doctors.” She is the Immediate Past President (2013-14) of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation’s largest medical specialty organization. She also served as Governor of the Northern California chapter of the ACP from 2004 to 2009.

Dr. Cooke is a graduate of Stanford University and received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine. She did her residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, where she also served as chief resident in medicine and did a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellowship focusing on ethics. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2013.