The Athena Institute Fund for Behavioral Immunology in Women’s Wellness made its first substantial award in May of 2023 to Robert M Kaplan, PhD a preeminent scholar in the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center who has agreed to direct research on which behavioral habits generate measurable improvements in immune strength of peri and post-menopausal women.

With a series of viral pandemics generating fear worldwide, it seems timely to discover what these women can do to build their resistance through their own self efficacy.

The I Ching teaches that the smallest thing in the universe will overcome the largest thing in the universe and that without substance can enter where there is no room.

We hope this new research will generate a contribution to knowledge as we learn how a woman can improve her own immune system to enable it to better withstand the inevitable intrusion of new airborne viruses.

Robert M. Kaplan is a Senior Scholar at the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC) at Stanford School of Medicine, with a co-appointment at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. He previously served as Chief Science Officer at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and as Associate Director of the National Institutes of Health, where he led the behavioral and social sciences programs.

Kaplan is also a Distinguished Research Professor of Health Policy and Management at UCLA, where he formerly directed both the UCLA/RAND AHRQ Health Services Training Program and the UCLA/RAND CDC Prevention Research Center. From 2004 to 2009, he chaired UCLA’s Department of Health Services. Prior to that, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (1997–2004).

He has been elected as president of five national or international professional organizations and was Editor-in-Chief for two academic journals (Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology). Kaplan is the author, co-author, or editor of 21 books and more than 600 articles and chapters. He appears on several lists of the most highly cited scientists (H-index >123) and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2005.

In 2019, Kaplan began contributing regular opinion pieces as a public intellectual. His op-eds have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury News, The San Francisco Chronicle, STAT News (Boston Globe Media), RealClear Politics, MedPage Today, Health Affairs, The Hill, The Chronical of Higher Education, and other outlets.