Friday, June 8, 2012

Mark Your Calendars: AOA Visiting Professorship Lectures

Dr. Molly Cooke, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, will be presenting two Alpha Omega Alpha Visiting Professorship lectures at the University of South Alabama. All USA College of Medicine faculty members are welcome to attend.

The first lecture, titled "The Physicians of 2030: We Are Training Them Now, Are We Doing It Right?” will be held June 18, 2012, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. The second lecture, titled "The New Professionalism," will be held the same day from noon to 1 p.m. Both lectures will take place at the USA Medical Center Richards Room.

Dr. Cooke, who serves as the William G. Irwin Endowed Chair and director of the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators at the University of California at San Francisco, has been active in medical education program development throughout her career.

An awardee of Health Resources and Services Administration 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 medical students.

Dr. Cooke has taught in the Parnassus Integrated Student Clinical Experiences (PISCES) since its inception and advises a research group that is studying longitudinal integrated clinical experiences at three sites nationally to replace the conventional third year of medical school.

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), and 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, Dr. Cooke 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." The book was co-authored with Drs. David Irby and Bridget O’Brien and was published in June 2010 by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Dr. Cooke has advised the AMA, the American College of Physicians, 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 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.” Governor of the Northern California chapter of the American College of Physicians from 2004 to 2009, she completed a term as chair of the Board of Governors in April 2010 and currently serves as a Regent of the College.

Dr. Cooke earned her bachelor of science and medical degrees at Stanford University. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of California at San Francisco and served as chief resident and a Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow.

She is an active member of various professional organizations including the Society for General Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians (Fellow 1986), HIV Medical Association, Society of Primary Care Policy Fellows, Physicians for Human Rights, American Educational Research Association, and American Medical Education.

In addition, she has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Newsline, and Internal Medicine. Currently, she serves on the editorial board for MedScape medical student site, and has been an ad hoc reviewer for several journals including Academic Medicine, AIDS, American Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, and Journal of General Internal Medicine.

For more information on the lectures, contact Dr. Susan LeDoux at (251) 460-6762 or sledoux@usouthal.edu .