Monthly Newsletter | August 2026

Welcome to all the DHM New Hires and Academic Hospital Medicine Fellows who recently joined DHM this summer. Onboarding season is always a highlight of the year, and we look forward to working with and getting to know all of you in the weeks and months ahead!

Meet DHM

Get to know our division by reading our faculty and staff interviews!

Saj Patel was elected to the UCSF Health Leadership Council where he will serve on the Quality, Safety and Experience Committee.

Liz Dzeng was awarded an ASCENT palliative care research consortium Pilot and Exploratory Studies Award. This award will fund a two year ethnographic study of patients with serious illness and their surrogates and how they interact with a hospital's institutional culture to influence the intensity of care near the end of life.

Dawood Tahir had 12 abstracts accepted at the American College of Gastroenterology annual scientific meeting 2026 as first and second authors.

Mia Awan was selected as one of three winners in SHM's "HM Voices 2026 Contest." Her artwork has been published in August's issue of SHM's The Hospitalist. 

Stephanie Rennke has been accepted as a scholar into the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in the Health Professions. The eight-month longitudinal professional development program will officially begin this October and run through May 2027.

Priya Prasad, along with colleagues from the Division of Cardiology and the School of Nursing, received a two-year R21 from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to develop a model for ventricular tachycardia burden using expertly adjudicated true events. The research team will build off this analysis in the future to assess whether VT burden is a feasible metric for VT risk assessment and to incorporate into continuous bedside monitoring.

The educational innovation "Beyond Translation: Designing Patient-Centered Visual Consent Tools for Bedside Procedures" by Ritu Bansal and summer intern Asal Bastani has been accepted for the Teaching Competition at the 2026 SGIM Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting.

Community Corner

Welcome to the heart of DHM! This spot is all about keeping you in the loop on all things community — highlights from last month's events, snapshots of fun moments, and a heads-up on what's coming up next month. Keep an eye here for dates, details, and photos that celebrate our DHM community spirit! Reach out to Rosemary Yau to share yours.

Upcoming events:

• DHM Volunteering at GLIDE on September 1, 11:00 AM-1:30 PM, sign up here
• End of Onboarding Celebration on September 3, 5:00-8:00 PM at Kirsten's house

New Hire Happy Hour on July 2 at Underdog Tres

Join the CBC team or suggest an event here!

Equity & Belonging in Hospital Medicine

For this month's Equity & Belonging section, we are sharing a few different opportunities in the realms of social medicine and equity & belonging, as well as a reminder on steps to take if federal law enforcement officials, including ICE officers, visit any UCSF office:

DHM Anti-Discrimination Task Force Meeting (ADTF)

When: Tuesday, September 15th 12pm-1:15pm at the library (Hybrid Zoom and In-Person; room TBD). Join other DHM faculty and staff for our quarterly ADTF meeting to discuss issues related to equity, belonging, and anti-discrimination. Everyone welcome! Email Martha to be added to the Outlook event invite. 

New Volunteer Opportunity for DHM, Medical Evaluations for Patients Experiencing Homelessness in the East Bay

DHM has a new community-based clinical partnership with the Homeless Action Center (HAC) in the East Bay. Interested DHM hospitalists can volunteer to do medical exams for HAC clients, which can go a long way towards supporting people in need of, and applying for, SSI and SSDI benefits in Alameda County. If interested please reach out to Phuoc Le.

Federal Law Enforcement, Including ICE, on Campus - Phone Numbers to Know

In non-clinical settings — the first call should be to the UCSF Police (415-476-1414) to let them know that immigration officers are on campus.

In the hospital, contact the House Supervisor, Nursing Supervisor, or Resource Nurse On-Call according to site, numbers below:

• Parnassus Voalte Role: Hospital Supervisor Parn; Voalte Phone: 415-353-8036; Office Phone: 415-353-1964
• Mission Bay Voalte Role: Adult MBCRN and RRT; Voalte Phone: 415-502-0562; Office Phone: 415-885-3833
• Mount Zion Voalte Role: Adult MZCRN and RRT; Voalte Phone: 628-248-9911; Office Phone: 415-502-9134
• Stanyan Voalte Role: SMH Nursing Supervisor; Voalte Phone: 415-297-1798 

Additionally, more information is available on this FAQ about responding to potential situations on UCSF property. The supervisor on-call will contact the Administrator-On-Call. If required, you can also contact the AOC directly, numbers below:

• West Bay AOC Pager: 415-443-9097
• Notify Nerys Benfield when contacting AOC at Parnassus, or Lauren Linett when contacting AOC from Stanyan.

The DHM PFAC: Updates

We're on summer break for the PFAC, so no new updates for the month. If you'd like to join our DHM Patient and Family Advisory Council for a consult we have openings in the fall, and we also welcome any DHM faculty or staff to join for a meeting and to experience the PFAC — come join us! Email Martha to schedule your visit to the PFAC for their patient and family-centered expertise.

- Signed the PFAC facilitator team, Jeannie, Martha, and Yalda

[Photo from June 2026 PFAC dinner at Lavash]

Liz Dzeng, together with Teva Brender, a UCSF Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow, published a commentary in JAMA Network Open on "What Patients Want From AI-Drafted Portal Messages—Empathy in the In-Basket."

Akshar Rambachan and Andy Auerbach published a viewpoint in JAMA Internal Medicine advocating for a reframing of pain assessment in older adults. The piece highlights using integrated plus intensity assessment frameworks as opposed to intensity only pain assessment. 

Himali Weerahandi and James Harrison published a study in Circulation: Heart Failure, highlighting care transitions from skilled nursing facilities to home as an important opportunity to improve outcomes for patients with heart failure.

Sirisha Narayana and colleagues discuss in a commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine how civil commitment for substance use disorder lacks evidence and may violate civil liberties.

Anand Habib was the lead author on a study published in JAMA Network Open. In reviewing 7,582 recommendations issued by 23 medical specialty societies between 2019-2023, he and his co-authors found that only 3.8% provided clear guidance informed by resource-, economic- or cost-related evidence, calling into question whether initiatives like ABIM's Choosing Wisely have meaningfully advanced evidence-informed, value-based clinical care.

Internal medicine residents in the REFLECT program with the support of Mia Awan, Bingyan Shi, Omid Shah, and James Harrison published details of the Resident-Led Implementation and Evaluation of an EHR–Embedded Hospital to SNF Discharge Checklist.

Himali Weerahandi is the senior author of a Journal of Hospital Medicine editorial that highlights why a one-size-fits-all approach to early outpatient follow-up after hospitalization may not best serve all older adults and advocates for individualized, risk-based transitional care strategies.

Peter Barish, Andy Auerbach, and Sumant Ranji coauthored a perspective piece in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, which introduced a new framework for hospitalists on the best practices of using Large Language Models (LLMs) in the diagnostic process.