Dr. Susan Folkman is a distinguished psychologist renowned for her pioneering contributions to understanding psychological stress and coping mechanisms. She served as the inaugural full-time director of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine from 2001 to 2009 and held a professorship in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to her leadership at the Osher Center, she co-directed the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies from 1994 to 2001, where she developed influential research programs examining stress responses in the context of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Folkman's academic journey began with her PhD in Educational Psychology from UC Berkeley in 1979, followed by research positions at Berkeley before she joined UCSF in 1988, where she established herself as a leading authority in the psychology of stress adaptation.
Dr. Folkman's most seminal contribution to psychological science was her collaborative work with Richard S. Lazarus culminating in the groundbreaking 1984 publication 'Stress, Appraisal and Coping,' which introduced the critical distinction between emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies. Her research fundamentally reshaped the theoretical framework for understanding how individuals respond to psychological stress, with numerous studies examining coping mechanisms in contexts of serious illness, bereavement, and caregiving, particularly during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Through NIH-funded longitudinal studies, she documented how individuals navigate the emotional challenges of caring for partners with HIV/AIDS and bereavement, generating invaluable insights into adaptive processes during profound life stressors. Her later work further expanded the field by investigating the co-occurrence of positive emotions during stressful periods, revealing how positive affect can serve as a crucial resource for resilience and psychological adaptation.
Dr. Folkman's intellectual leadership extended beyond her research through significant service to the scientific community, including chairing the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine from 2005 to 2007 and serving on National Academy of Medicine and NIH workgroups. Her exceptional contributions were recognized with the California Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 and an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University, reflecting her international impact on psychological science. As a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, she helped shape research ethics as co-chair of the APA task force on ethics in research with human participants. Dr. Folkman's enduring legacy continues to influence contemporary research on stress and coping, with her theoretical frameworks remaining foundational to understanding human resilience in the face of adversity across multiple domains of psychological and medical research.
