Dr. Rebecca Cook

Clinical Lead

Becca Cook, MD, MSc, is the clinical lead for AMPATH/MAPAS México at Dell Medical School and an assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health and Internal Medicine and courtesy assistant professor in Pediatrics.

She is a med-peds physician serving as a hospitalist in the UT-Austin health system and as the clinical lead for AMPATH/MAPAS México. She is interested in helping to train the next generation health providers to transform health care delivery and designing systems to improve access, quality and equity in health for vulnerable populations globally.

Cook studied biology and international studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She received a Masters in Medical Anthropology and Global Health from Oxford University and a medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She completed combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency training program at Massachusetts General Hospital(MGH)/Harvard Medical School. Following residency training, Cook served an additional year as pediatric chief resident at MGH/HMS.

Cook then joined the pediatric global health fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Medical School where she served in Liberia with Partners In Health, a nonprofit health organization focused on reducing global health disparities by strengthening health systems through public sector support and community-based programs. She also worked in central Massachusetts providing pediatric emergency/urgent care and walk-in services at one of the largest federally qualified health centers in Worcester, Massachusetts. Rebecca earned a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the Gorgas Institute of Tropical Medicine in Peru. After completing her fellowship in 2018, she joined PIH Liberia full-time, serving as the sole pediatrician for a region with over 350,000 people and helping to build the country’s first rural training program for family medicine and general physicians. In 2019 she was appointed director of clinical services for PIH, leading the clinical implementation for the entire organization including PIH’s COVID-19 response. In her role in Liberia, she held faculty positions with the Liberian College of Physicians and Surgeons and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

At Dell Med, Cook leads clinical and medical education programs in AMPATH/MAPAS México, supporting the team to establish a long-term, mutually beneficial, bilateral partnership with a medical school and public health system in Puebla, Mexico, to engage across the trifold academic mission of service, teaching and research to strengthen health systems and improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations in both Mexico and Texas. She teaches and mentors medical students and residents interested in global health and partners with faculty members across the UT-Austin campus who are interested in global health and social justice.