Dr. Annesa Flentje

Biography

Annesa Flentje is a Professor at Stanford University, based at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in the Department of Medicine. As a clinical psychologist, her research focuses on understanding the impacts of stress on human health and disease. Dr. Flentje's work investigates how stress directly affects health outcomes through processes mediated by behaviors like substance use and coping strategies, as well as through molecular mechanisms such as epigenetics and transcriptional regulation. She has developed cognitive-behavioral interventions aimed at reducing stress and has identified mechanisms that modify immune pathways and gene expression. Currently, Dr. Flentje is leading a large comparative effectiveness study of interventions for posttraumatic stress symptoms in LGBTQIA+ populations in California. She has also spearheaded nationwide mentoring initiatives to support health research in understudied populations and facilitate translational research aimed at improving health outcomes. Dr. Flentje is the Co-Director of the PRIDE Study, a national longitudinal cohort study of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the United States, which has enrolled 30,000 participants over nearly a decade of data collection.

Research Interests

Courses