Eve Ekman’s research interests were inspired by her experience as a medical social worker in the emergency department of San Francisco General Hospital, coupled with her training in the applied emotion regulation and mindfulness intervention, Cultivating Emotional Balance, CEB. Eve returned UC Berkeley–where she received her masters degree in 2006–for a doctorate from the Department of Social Welfare, to explore stress and positive coping among human service care providers, graduating in spring 2014. Ekman’s dissertation case study worked with juvenile jail guards to examine the relationships between meaning in work, burnout and empathy, as well as tailor a CEB-based pilot training to support these workers.

At the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Eve will continue to refine the conceptual framework, research, and training in the areas of meaning, empathy and burnout. Her population will again be care providers, this time a study population of residents in training, with a long-term goal of pioneering interpersonal training for medical education, to support empathic skills, experience of meaning and managing burnout. Additionally, Eve’s research interests include technology assisted devices to promote emotion regulation and mindfulness, developing dynamic measurement for empathy, and assessing the downstream impact of provider empathy on quality of patient care.