Molly Cooke, MD
Professor Emeritus
Medicine
School of Medicine

Appointed in July 2012, her charge is to develop a portfolio of high impact educational programs for UCSF students, residents, fellows, post-docs, and faculty members and to devise 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 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. 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, by Molly Cooke, David M. Irby and Bridget C. O’Brien, published in June 2010 by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Dr. Cooke has worked on using education and faculty development to address the health problems of under-served populations. 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, including community health and advocacy. She was the School of Medicine’s liaison to UCSF’s regional campus in Fresno from 2008 to 2013 and, in that capacity and as a member of the San Joaquin Valley PRIME advisory board, addressed health inequities in California’s Central Valley. She provided the educational expertise for IDCAP, Infectious Disease Capacity Building Evaluation, a three-year project exploring cost-effective ways to build capacity among mid-level providers in sub-Saharan Africa funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She serves on the Training Advisory Committee of he University of Zimbabwe Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI); the US partner institutions are the University of Colorado and Stanford University.

Dr. Cooke is a practicing internist with a special interest in HIV and other complex chronic illnesses. She has advised the AMA, the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the AAMC 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.” She is 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. She 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.

• HIV policy: the path forward--a joint position paper of the HIV Medicine Association of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American College of Physicians.
  Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2009 Lubinski C, Aberg J, Bardeguez AD, Elion R, Emmanuel P, Kuritzkes D, Saag M, Squires KE, Weddle A, Rainey J, Zerehi MR, Ralston JF, Fleming DA, Bronson D, Cooke M, Cutler C, Ejnes Y, Gluckman R, …
• Achieving a high-performance health care system with universal access: what the United States can learn from other countries.
  Annals of internal medicine 2007 Public Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians, Ginsburg JA, Doherty RB, Ralston JF, Senkeeto N, Cooke M, Cutler C, Fleming DA, Freeman BP, Gluckman RA, Liebow M, McLean RM, Musana KA, …
• Perceptions and attributions of third-year student struggles in clerkships: do students and clerkship directors agree?
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2007 O'Brien B, Cooke M, Irby DM
• Do as I say: curricular discordance in medical school end-of-life care education.
  Journal of palliative medicine 2007 Rabow M, Gargani J, Cooke M
• American medical education 100 years after the Flexner report.
  The New England journal of medicine 2006 Cooke M, Irby DM, Sullivan W, Ludmerer KM
• Provider behaviors contributing to patient self-management of chronic illness among underserved populations.
  Journal of health care for the poor and underserved 2005 Greene J, Yedidia MJ, Take Care to Learn Evalutation Collaborative
• The academy movement: a structural approach to reinvigorating the educational mission.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2004 Irby DM, Cooke M, Lowenstein D, Richards B
• Comparing the attitudes of urban and rural Iranian women toward menopause.
  Maturitas 2003 Khademi S, Cooke MS
• The UCSF Academy of Medical Educators.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2003 Cooke M, Irby DM, Debas HT
• Intersessions: covering the bases in the clinical year.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2002 Fenton C, Loeser H, Cooke M
• When the time comes to talk about HIV: factors associated with diagnostic disclosure and emotional distress in HIV-infected children.
  Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) 2002 Lester P, Chesney M, Cooke M, Weiss R, Whalley P, Perez B, Glidden D, Petru A, Dorenbaum A, Wara D
• The Academies Collaborative: sharing a new model for medical education.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2002 Rider EA, Cooke M, Lowenstein D
• The UCSF Academy of Medical Educators.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2002 Cooke M, Irby DM
• Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry
  Diagnostic disclosure to HIV-infected children: how parents decide when and what to tell 2002 Lester P Chesney M Cooke M Whalley P Perez B Dorenbaum A Petru A Wara D
• How did we make the Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum Project work? National efforts to facilitate success.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2001 Lesky L, Davis A, Cooke M
• Goals and strategies for teaching death and dying in medical schools.
  Journal of palliative medicine 2000 Nelson W, Angoff N, Binder E, Cooke M, Fleetwood J, Goodlin S, Goodman K, Kaplan KO, McCormick T, Meyer ML, Sheehan M, Townsend T, Williams P, Winslade W
• A strategy for the detection and evaluation of unprofessional behavior in medical students. University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine Clinical Clerkships Operation Committee.
  Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 1999 Papadakis MA, Osborn EH, Cooke M, Healy K
• Physicians' transmission prevention assessment and counseling practices with their HIV positive patients.
  AIDS education and prevention : official publication of the International Society for AIDS Education 1999 Gerbert B, Brown B, Volberding P, Cooke M, Caspers N, Love C, Bronstone A
• Do patients' ethnic and social factors influence the use of do-not-resuscitate orders?
  Ethnicity & disease 1999 Thompson BL, Lawson D, Croughan-Minihane M, Cooke M
• Informal caregivers and the intention to hasten AIDS-related death.
  Archives of internal medicine 1998 Cooke M, Gourlay L, Collette L, Boccellari A, Chesney MA, Folkman S
• Physician responses to a hospital policy allowing them to not offer cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 1996 Swig L, Cooke M, Osmond D, Luce JA, Brody RV, Bird C, Luce JM
• Postbereavement depressive mood and its prebereavement predictors in HIV+ and HIV- gay men.
  Journal of personality and social psychology 1996 Folkman S, Chesney M, Collette L, Boccellari A, Cooke M
• The consequences of a positive prenatal HIV antibody test for women.
  Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes and human retrovirology : official publication of the International Retrovirology Association 1995 Lester P, Partridge JC, Chesney MA, Cooke M
• Caregiver burden in HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners of men with AIDS.
  Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 1994 Folkman S, Chesney MA, Cooke M, Boccellari A, Collette L
• Proficiency of internal medicine residents in outpatient care of patients with HIV infection.
  Journal of general internal medicine 1994 Schultz P, Bindman AB, Cooke M
• Ethical, behavioral, and social aspects of HIV vaccine trials in developing countries.
  JAMA 1994 Lurie P, Bishaw M, Chesney MA, Cooke M, Fernandes ME, Hearst N, Katongole-Mbidde E, Koetsawang S, Lindan CP, Mandel J
• Postnatal human immunodeficiency virus antibody testing. The effects of current policy on infant care and maternal informed consent.
  The Western journal of medicine 1992 Lester P, Partridge JC, Cooke M
• Withholding and withdrawal of life support from the critically ill.
  The New England journal of medicine 1990 Smedira NG, Evans BH, Grais LS, Cohen NH, Lo B, Cooke M, Schecter WP, Fink C, Epstein-Jaffe E, May C
• Occupational transmission of HIV: the ethics of physician risk and responsibility.
  AIDS clinical review 1990 Cooke M
• Physician risk and responsibility in the HIV epidemic.
  The Western journal of medicine 1990 Cooke M
• The HIV epidemic and training in internal medicine. Challenges and recommendations.
  The New England journal of medicine 1989 Cooke M, Sande MA
• Voluntary screening for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Weighing the benefits and harms.
  Annals of internal medicine 1989 Lo B, Steinbrook RL, Cooke M, Coates TJ, Walters EJ, Hulley SB
• Ethics of the HIV epidemic, physician risk and responsibility.
  Current opinion in infectious diseases 1989 Cooke M
• AIDS and Public Policy Journal
  Housestaff attitudes toward the Acquird Immunodeficiency Syndrom 1989 Cooke M
• Attitudes of medical residents regarding intensive care for patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
  Archives of internal medicine 1988 Wachter RM, Cooke M, Hopewell PC, Luce JM
• Ethical issues in the care of patients with AIDS.
  QRB. Quality review bulletin 1986 Cooke M
• Evaluation of the seminar method to improve clinical teaching.
  Journal of general internal medicine 1986 Skeff KM, Stratos G, Campbell M, Cooke M, Jones HW
• Evaluation of impotence.
  The Western journal of medicine 1986 Cooke M
• AIDS and ethics.
  Issues in science and technology 1986 Jonsen AR, Cooke M, Koenig BA
• Assessment by attending physicians of a seminar method to improve clinical teaching.
  Journal of medical education 1984 Skeff KM, Campbell M, Stratos G, Jones HW, Cooke M
• Mediastinal tumor causing continuous murmur.
  American heart journal 1984 Cooke M, Wolk PJ, Cheitlin MD
• Diagnosis and outcome of bowel infarction on an acute medical service.
  The American journal of medicine 1983 Cooke M, Sande MA