Monthly Newsletter | December 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to pause and express our gratitude for this amazing community. As we look around (over Zoom, in our clinical spaces, in CSB5…) we see people who have worked hard, experienced both joys and sorrows, strive tirelessly to make the world a better place, and who continually bolster and support each other.

We could go on and on about your many accomplishments: new partnerships, exciting research, innovations, honors and awards. We are inspired by the patients whose lives you've touched through your knowledge and kindness, whether directly as a physician, or indirectly through your work. We are grateful for the students and residents you’ve inspired through your passion and drive. We all do so much — and can get so busy — that it can be easy to forget how astonishing each of these feats are.

We have experienced many challenges too — tightening budgets, burnout, the pandemic, societal ills. These are real, hard, and are not immediately going away. Through it all, however, we cannot think of another group we’d rather work with to address these challenges head on.

Let us mark this moment and celebrate all we have done, and to be excited for all the things yet to come. Thank you all for making DHM such an incredible place and we're looking forward to 2023!

Annie, Margaret, and Brad

We started a new DHM holiday tradition last year by making a donation to organizations that reflect our division’s values, and this year we will continue this by donating to GLIDE to support the work they do to provide meals, housing support, and family resources to members of our community.

Rupa Marya spoke at the UN Climate Conference in Egypt about her work with food, farming and medicine. 

Yalda Shahram will speak on a Roundtable Discussion on Iran and the Woman Life Freedom Movement, hosted by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Dan Lowenstein and Vice Chancellor Renee Navarro. The panel will be on Thursday December 8 at 12:00 pm.

DHM Social Activities

We will hold our annual DHM After-the-Holidays Holiday Party with an evening of cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and good company on January 6, 2023 from 6:00 to 10:00pm at The Vault Garden! All DHM faculty, fellows and staff are welcome plus one adult guest.

The FIFA World Cup is underway in Qatar, and in addition to spotlighting amazing football, special attention is being demanded to focus on the workers who built the infrastructure for the games over the past 10 years. Estimates put workers who have died in the 400s, but no accurate tally is available. In addition to mortality, there is the issue of the morbidity of working in hot conditions, including a rise in chronic kidney disease. The climate crisis has fueled hotter temperatures, and workers, such as the people who migrated to Qatar from Nepal and Bangladesh and other countries, are experiencing the health impacts with no due process and no funds being granted to them for liability. The talk of "Loss and Damages" at COP27 in Egypt remains to be seen; what happens if the people do not demand accountability for these agreements? Human Rights Day is December 10^th — think about taking action for supporting the rights of workers, particularly those who have been and are currently exploited by the capitalist system.

For feedback, or to share pearls in the next DHM newsletter, please email Yalda.Shahram@ucsf.edu

Ben Rosner had an article published in Diagnosis on imagining the future of diagnostic performance feedback.

A team of DHM faculty and staff (Ari Hoffman, Sandra Oreper, James Harrison, Michael Chang, Priya Prasad) and UCSF learners and fellows (Alex Kazberouk and Nicole Boyd) published an article in Patient Experience Journal describing patient experiences of transferring from UCSF Parnassus to St. Mary's.

Margaret Fang and Priya Prasad were coauthors on a PCORI-funded study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that showed people with limited health literacy reported lower treatment satisfaction when taking anticoagulants for venous thromboembolism.