Dr. Monika Anna Koch, MD

I graduated from Justus-Liebig Universität, Gießen, Germany, in 1988. After spending two years completing a PhD in immunology and internship in internal medicine in Munich, I moved to Stony Brook, New York. There I joined the residency program in psychiatry and later added a fellowship in addiction medicine in San Francisco. Since then I have worked in addiction psychiatry here in the Bay Area and briefly in Germany.

I became a physician because it is one of the most intriguing applications of scientific progress combined with the unique patient-doctor relationship. Addiction psychiatry is a young and very dynamic specialty. Staff as well as patients come from very different backgrounds. Their experience and ideas combined with the active research in the field demonstrate how healing and recovery from very deep wounds and severe disease are possible and hopeful. So it is very easy for me to like my job, especially in an environment like Kaiser Permanente, where we provide …integrated treatment, a team approach that benefits patients and physicians.

Outside of my work at Kaiser I have many different interests that range from organizing educational activities for the California Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) to horseback riding and hiking to reading fiction and, above all, spending time with my family.