How Vulnerable Populations Are Coping with COVID-19

Science of Caring • Apr. 2020 • by Milanko Martinovich
"The coronavirus pandemic has caused one of the worst global health crises in history. Researchers at the UCSF School of Nursing are developing studies to learn more about the virus, especially its impact on vulnerable populations." One such study involves the LGBTQ+ community that Annesa Flentje mentions in this article. 

Amid Substance Use Epidemic, New Research and Training Aims to Stem Tide

Science of Caring • Dec. 2019 • by Milanko Martinovich
Read about Annesa Flentje and Matt Tierney's "Substance Use and Mental Illness" course at the UCSF School of Nursing here.

We Don’t Know Nearly Enough About LGBTQ Health. A Massive New Study May Change That.

Slate • Aug. 2017 • by Daniel Summers
"[W]e still lack a comprehensive understanding of the ways that being an LGBTQ person can influence one’s overall health, or of health disparities within the LGTBQ community itself. Researchers at the University of California–San Francisco are hoping to close that gap."

Can Stress Change How Our Genes Behave? 

UCSF Science of Caring • Mar. 2017 • by Diana Austin

"Researcher Annesa Flentje, assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Systems at UC San Francisco School of Nursing, is looking at ways stress among sexual minorities – those whose sexual orientation, identity or practices differ from the majority – can affect physical and mental health, starting at the genetic level, with a particular focus of late on the effect of stress on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive men."

Together Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness

HuffPost Highline• Mar. 2017 • by Michael Hobbes

"Annesa Flentje, a stress researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, specializes in the effect of minority stress on gene expression. All those little punches combine with our adaptations to them, she says, and become 'automatic ways of thinking that never get challenged or turned off, even 30 years later.'"