Molly Cooke, MD
Director of The Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators

Molly Cooke, MD, Professor of Medicine and William G. Irwin Endowed Chair, is the Director of UCSF’s Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators. The Academy, established to serve as a community for medical school faculty with significant commitment to medical education, to advocate for teachers in the promotion process and to enhance funding in support of teaching, is nationally recognized as a groundbreaking initiative. Dr. Cooke has been active in medical education program development throughout her career. She was a founding member of the Division of General Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital and participated in the development of the primary care internal medicine residency at that hospital. An awardee of HRSA funding for the "Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum", she served as the founding Director of "Foundations of Patient Care", an innovative six quarter preceptorship-based course for first and second year students. She is the Co-Director of the campus-wide Center for Collaborative Primary Care and has twice received the Kaiser Family Foundation Teaching Award as well as a UCSF Academic Senate Award for Distinction in Teaching.

Dr. Cooke is, additionally, well-known in the field of HIV ethics. After fellowship training with a focus in bioethics, she established the first ethics committee at San Francisco General Hospital and served as its chair, becoming experienced with the ethical problems arising in urban public hospitals, particularly those associated with HIV illness and resource allocation decisions. She has advised the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, and the Association of American 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. Dr. Cooke testified before both National AIDS Commissions (1988 and 1990) and served as Chair of the Board of Project Open Hand, the internationally known food program for people with HIV, from 1995 through 1996.