Dr. Christine Cook was appointed chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health effective February 2005 and served until July 2011.

Dr. Cook earned her M.D. at the University of Louisville. She remained at U of L to complete her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility. She served as director of the residency program from 1984 through 1989 and resumed that appointment in 2003. In this role, she has received four outstanding teaching awards.

Dr. Cook has spent thirty years educating medical students, residents, and fellows while providing care for university-based and private sector patients. She has taught microscopic laparoscopic, hysteroscopic and related skills to residents and serves as an attending for inpatient and outpatient care of women at University Hospital.

As an extension of her infertility practice, Dr. Cook developed and directed the In Vitro Fertilization Center in affiliation with The Norton Hospital from 1983 through 1998. This program offers intracytoplasmic injection, embryo freezing, gamete donation and surrogacy. The Center has just announced the delivery of its 1000th infant. More recently, Dr. Cook has served as president of the private practice organization of her department and successfully led that group through a phase of contraction and regrowth while facilitating its more thorough integration into the academic department, as well as with University Gynecologic and Obstetric Foundation (a nonprofit patient care center) and the Brown Cancer Center.

Dr. Cook’s research has been conducted in affiliation with members of the departments of pharmacology, biochemistry, anatomy, surgery and urology. She has more than thirty publications and a number of abstracts ranging in subject from the pathophysiology of premenstrual syndrome to the possible role of müllerian inhibiting substance in normal and abnormal reproductive function.

Dr. Cook has traveled to Constanta, Romania to help conduct an initiative to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. The program has evolved into a guide for the practice of preventive medicine on a broader sense through instruction of the family practice physicians in that community.