DGIM DEI, Anti-Racism, & Advocacy Programs

General Programs

Space committee

SPACE Committee Social Justice, Political Advocacy Community Engagement committee (SPACE) since 2019. We donate to La Casa de Las Madres, engage in advocacy actions, meeting with policymakers, and build community among DGIM staff, trainees & faculty dedicated to SPACE topics.  
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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Stop racism

Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression Town Halls established 2020 after George Floyd’s murder. Topics we’ve discussed:  Political Advocacy, Book Club: So You Want to Talk About Race, Race & Racism defined, Affirming Our Commitment to Equity, Supporting Community Business Owners of Color, Stop Asian Hate, Allyship, and Bystander Training.  For all at DGIM.    
[email protected]

Language Equity Access

Language Equity Access Quality Improvement (LAQI) Committee aims to identify disparities in access, patient experience, and care that exist for DGIM patients whose preferred language with healthcare is one other than English, also known as limited English proficiency (LEP). This group consists of faculty, staff, and members of interpreter services working on behalf of our patients.
[email protected]

Director of DEI DOM

Director of DEI at DGIM, Gina Moreno-John Projects: update ads to hire faculty & researchers, acknowledge ethnic and cultural celebrations, weekly and quarterly DEI education, DEI 101 workshop, handout to negotiate at work, help update breastfeeding policy, food insecurity survey for trainees and staff, anti-racism book club. Future: complete DEI survey with Diversio and fix areas that need improvement, create policies to address interpersonal conflicts.
[email protected]

Director of Advocacy

Director of Advocacy at DGIM, Beth Griffiths  Leads UCPC residency training in policy, advocacy and community engagement, which includes a partnership with GLIDE (Tenderloin-based org) to engage directly in their community work and to contribute to their advocacy for policy change. Leads DGIM faculty development in health policy & advocacy with Primary Care Grand Rounds, policy updates at faculty meetings, individual consultations, and in our newsletter.
[email protected]

AANHPI

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Taskforce.  Charged with identifying key issues facing AANHPI members at DGIM including academic staff, clinical staff, learners/trainees and faculty and to offer recommendations/solutions to the DGIM leadership.        
[email protected]  [email protected]

Academics

Social and Behavioral Health

Social and Behavioral Medicine Seminar for UCPC R2 & R3 residents.  Seminar for R2 and R3 residents when on ambulatory block.  Topics include Racism in Medicine, Health Literacy, Intimate Partner Violence, Addiction, Underserved patient populations & more.           
[email protected], [email protected]

Community Engaged Advocacy

Community-Engaged Advocacy Curriculum for UCPC R2 & R3 residents. Residents partner with GLIDE, a Tenderloin-based community-based organization that provides comprehensive services including daily meals and harm reduction services and advocates for policy change to further social justice. Residents provide direct service at GLIDE while engaging in critical reflection, learn advocacy skills, and partner with GLIDE to take action to affect policy change in areas relevant to our patients and community.
[email protected]  

Health Policy Curriculum

Health Policy Curriculum for UCPC R2 & R3 residents.  Topics include Medicaid, Medicare, Private Health Insurance, the Affordable Care Act, and Single Payer & Other Paths to Universal Health Care
[email protected]  

Patient Programs

DGIM Food Pharmacy  Since August 2019 providers screen patients for food insecurity then refer them to the DGIM Food Pharmacy.  We distribute healthy groceries every 2 weeks to food insecure patients. Important facts about the DGIM Food Pharmacy:

  • 3,776 bags of groceries have been distributed through 9/2022
  • 88% have severe food insecurity (run out of food completely)
  • 72% are racial/ethnic patients of color (higher than their representation in clinic)
  • We have reduced mild food insecurity by 63% and severe food insecurity by 32%
  • 100% of patients have had increased access to healthy food.            
    [email protected]

Culinary Medicine Since 2022 we have offered cooking demonstrations for patients who are food insecure, to teach simple cooking and food preparation techniques as well as nutrition education.                                                                                                          [email protected]

DGIM African American Hypertension Project  All Primary Care practices at UCSF began a program to address the inequity in blood pressure control among African American patients with hypertension in 2020. The program includes pharmacist support, health navigator coaching, a free bp monitor and automated scheduling for those with uncontrolled BP readings.
[email protected]

DGIM Transportation Assistance Program We are developing a ride share strategy to offer transportation assistance for select patients who have difficulty with transportation to in-person visits at DGIM.
[email protected][email protected]

DGIM Project on Access and Competent Care for Patients with Disabilities Our Community Advisory Board (CAB) includes members who are patients with disabilities at our clinic as well as their family members and informal caregivers. Our partner community-based organizations include the Golden Gate Regional Center and the Arc San Francisco. We are working with our CAB and CBOs to:

  • Understand barriers and facilitators to healthcare experienced by our patients with disabilities
  • Provide guidance on how to improve access, care and experiences
  • Create a “Best Practices” report for providing optimal clinical care to persons living with disabilities to disseminate to UCSH Health and primary care practices.               
    [email protected]

DGIM & UCSF RESEARCH PROGRAMS WITH DGIM FACULTY

RESEARCH AT DGIM

DGIM serves as an administrative home and sponsor for multiple research centers that are focused on promoting patient-centered or population-based research across diverse populations, described below. Over two dozen DGIM faculty investigators conduct clinical epidemiology, clinical trials, practice or community-based research studies, and dissemination and implementation projects on topics including cancer control, substance use, cardiometabolic disease, other chronic disease management, women’s health, aging/geriatric care, patient-doctor communication, genetic epidemiology, with an emphasis on health equity.     
Director of Research:
[email protected]

RESEARCH AT UCSF

MERC

THE MULTIETHNIC HEALTH EQUITY RESEARCH CENTER The mission of MERC is to promote equity in health and healthcare for ethnically and linguistically diverse groups through applied multidisciplinary research and by training the next generation of investigators committed to achieving health equity. We seek to discover the mechanisms that explain health disparities and to develop, evaluate, and implement interventions that prevent and treat disease and advance health equity within healthcare systems and communities.

DGIM CORE FACULTY: Leah Karliner (Director), Maria Garcia (co-Director), Jane Jih (co-Director), Steve Gregorich, Celia Kaplan, Grace Lin, Pam Ling, Sunita Mutha, Tung Nguyen, Judith Walsh, Veronica Yank

DGIM AFFILIATE FACULTY: Nicole Appelle, Therese Chan Tack, Alison Huang, Alka Kanaya, Nhung Nguyen, Jesse Ristau, Jason Satterfield, Ida Sim, Mia Williams

ARCH

 

THE ASIAN AMERICAN RESEARCH CENTER ON HEALTH The Asian American Research Center on Health (ARCH) includes prominent researchers, community leaders, and clinicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Center will maintain an open and collaborative environment to carry out the vision, which is to be a leader in Asian American health research to promote health and health equity in partnership with Asian American communities. 

DGIM FACULTY: Tung Nguyen (Founder), Jane Jih (Co-Director), Janet Chu (Internship Director), Alka Kanaya, Don Ng, Nhung Nguyen, Leah Karliner

masala

THE MASALA STUDY  The Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study is the first longitudinal study in U.S. South Asians to understand what factors lead to heart disease and guide prevention and treatment of heart disease.

DGIM FACULTY: Alka Kanaya, Meghana Gadgil

Center for Aging and Diverse Committees

THE CENTER FOR AGING IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES CADC is dedicated to understanding and reducing health disparities among older racial/ethnic and sexual & gender minority populations. Our primary purpose is to train and mentor talented, underrepresented junior investigators to develop independent research careers focused on health disparities and aging issues. We do this primarily through our Scientist Training Program. We also provide resources for health disparities researchers focused on career development, research methods, conducting community and clinical intervention studies, and developing self-report measures.  

DGIM FACULTY: Leah Karliner (Director), Celia Kaplan, Tung Nguyen, Steve Gregorich, Maria Garcia, Alison Huang.

Women's Health Clinic

THE WOMEN’S HEALTH CLINICAL RESEARCH CENTER The Center provides infrastructure for researchers from multiple departments to collaborate on projects designed to advance scientific understanding of women's health conditions and test new interventions to reduce their impact on women's functioning and well-being. The WHCRC emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to improving women’s health by recognizing the importance and interdependence of clinical care, research, leadership development, education, and partnering with communities. 

DGIM FACULTY: Alison Huang (Co-Director), Alka Kanaya, Meghana Gadgil

Equity

THE EQUITY & JUSTICE IN EDUCATION PROGRAM, CTR FOR FACULTY EDUCATORS  Works-in-Progress meetings serve to empower educators, educational researchers, and learners to utilize rigorous educational research methodology to identify bias and unequal power distribution to advance equitable and inclusive solutions in opportunity and achievement across the continuum of health sciences education. 

DGIM FACULTY: Arianne Teherani

Cancer center

THE UCSF COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER  The UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center combines basic science, clinical research, epidemiology/cancer control, population science and patient care from throughout the UCSF system.

DGIM FACULTY: Tung Nguyen, Associate Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Co-Leader, Cancer Control Program. Pam Ling, Co-Leader, Cancer Control Program

DGIM & MERC SYMPOSIA TOPICS & PROJECTS

2021, 2023 DGIM SYMPOSIUM TOPICS

  • Digital Health for Individualized Evidence-Based Primary Care (Ida Sim)
  • Gene Expression in African American and Latinos Reveals Ancestry-Specific Patterns of Genetic Architecture, Race and Genetic Ancestry in Medicine – A Time for Reckoning with Racism (Elad Ziv)
  • Item Bias Analysis on SP Exams Narrative Feedback Analysis for Bias (Christy Boscardin)
  • Addressing DEI in Mobile Health Data and Precision Medicine (Ida Sim)
  • Improving Depression Care for Pts from Different Languages (Maria Garcia)
  • Assessment of MD Communication with Spanish-Speaking Patients; Testing a Program to Improve Pt-Clinical Communication for Pts who speak Limited English (Leah Karliner)
  • Health-related social needs in primary care, Taxi Voucher Project; Food, dietary habits and culture amount patients with multimorbidity (Jane Jih)
  • Engaging minority women in yoga supported by the NIH Office of Research Women's Health supplement award to advance research in underrepresented, underserved, and underreported populations (Alison Huang, Celia Kaplan). 
  • Mobile health training in behavioral incontinence for women with LEP; health and the aging brain in Latino Elders (Alison Huang).
  • Vietnamese Insights into Aging Program; Identifying Research Opportunities for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Health Trans-NIH Workshop (Alka Kanaya)
  • Review of sponsorship for URIM and women (Mitch Feldman, Mia Williams)
  • Evaluation of the UCSF Teach for Equity and Inclusion Certificate. Faculty development participants’ perceptions of how workshops address DEI (Pat O’Sullivan)
  • Piloting a spatial mixed method for understanding neighborhood tobacco use disparities (Pam Ling)

2023 MERC SYMPOSIUM TOPICS

  • Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo presented “Making Stones”
  • Early Life Adversity Predicts an Accelerated Cellular Aging Phenotype Through Early Timing of Puberty [email protected]
  • Use of tobacco and other substances among sexual minority young adults [email protected]
  • Ethnocultural Differences in Fluid Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease  [email protected]

RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • VAPING CESSATION. An innovated program that supports adolescents and young adults who are trying to quit vaping using support groups that meet on Instagram.  This program was co-created with young people through a community partnership with Rescue Agency and HopeLab and emphasizes accessible and relatable no-judgement support for vaping cessation.  Evaluation will be done with a randomized controlled trial.  [email protected]
  • YOGA. Promoting Engagement, Assessing Barriers, and Evaluating Self-Efficacy in Yoga Research Among Women From Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds. [email protected] [email protected]
  • INCONTINENCE MANAGEMENT. Language-Concordant Mobile Health Training and Support for Behavioral Management of Urinary Incontinence for Women with Limited English Proficiency. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

 

Thank you for your interest. We would love to answer your questions and hear your comments. Please contact us!