Professor of Medicine, UCSF Osher Foundation Distinguished Professor of Integrative Medicine Director, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine

Susan Folkman, PhD, is the Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and the Osher Foundation Distinguished Professor of Integrative Medicine at UCSF. She was appointed to these positions in 2001. Since 1990, she has also been Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and from 1994 until 2001 she was Co-Director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). Dr. Folkman received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1979, where she remained as a research psychologist until coming to UCSF and CAPS in 1988.

She is internationally recognized for her theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of psychological stress and coping. Her work since 1988 has focused on stress and coping in the context of HIV disease and other chronic illness, especially on issues having to do with caregiving and bereavement.

Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). From 2000-2004 she served on the NIH/NIMH National Advisory Mental Health Council. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine panel on CAM use in the US, and is currently Chair of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society and has chaired or been a member of various NIH proposal review committees, served on Institute of Medicine and NIH workgroups, and was co-chair of the American Psychological Association task force on ethics in research with human participants.

In 1997, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, for her contributions to coping theory and research.
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