Monthly Newsletter | December 2025

To build on something that Brad Monash recently said, "holiday messages from leaders are like pumpkin-spice lattes: seasonal, predictable, and sweet". I hope that the predictability of this seasonal message doesn't prevent you from feeling our deep gratitude and admiration. Each and every day, we feel so lucky to be able to work alongside such incredible people. We wish everybody in the division a joy-filled holiday season!

-Margaret, Brad, Deb, Rosemary, and Michael

Armond Esmaili was selected as a fellow in the 25th cohort of the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) Leadership Program. The two-year, part-time fellowship with CHCF and UCSF's Healthforce Center trains 32 clinician leaders across the state with leadership and management skills to advance the state's health care system, strengthen California's safety-net institutions, and advocate for more equitable and effective care. 

Sriram Shamasunder and Phuoc Le will publish an edited volume next year entitled Illuminating Global Health. This fascinating set of case studies not only illustrates the global interconnectedness of health issues across different continents but also brings clarity to the range of social theories used to make sense of the construction and distribution of health and illness around the world.

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.

Volunteer at GLIDE!

Looking for a way to give back to the community and bond with your co-workers outside the hospital? Join us at GLIDE, located in the Tenderloin, to serve hot lunches to hundreds of our neighbors who rely on this vital program. It's a powerful way to connect with the community and support food security in San Francisco.

Family and friends are welcome — the more hands, the merrier! We are volunteering monthly, the current available dates are 12/15/25 and 1/9/26, stay tuned for future dates if these don't work for you!

Sign up today to be part of this meaningful service opportunity.

November CBC Social, Bobalicious

Truman and Peter Barish enjoying a delicious beverage.

Join the CBC team or suggest an event here!

Equity & Belonging in Hospital Medicine

For December's Equity & Belonging Section, we wanted to share an upcoming training opportunity facilitated by our Code CARE colleagues.

Code CARE De-Escalation Simulations



These sessions are an opportunity for multidisciplinary team members of the de-escalation team — nursing, medicine, social work and spiritual services — to practice communicating with patients, families and healthcare providers in crisis. The sessions will focus on scenarios that lead to uncomfortable conversations around hospital policy with our disenfranchised patient population. The sessions are led by MD and RN facilitators who have skill sets in simulation, CPI, and trauma informed care. There will be simulated patients (SPs) who are actors trained to play the role of patients in the scenarios.

Register on the UC Learning Center website here, or search "Code C.A.R.E. De-Escalation" on the Learning Center website. Once you click "Register," the options for session dates will show up.

Upcoming sessions at Parnassus:

• January 7, 2026 9am-12pm
• January 21, 2026 9am-12pm
• January 26, 2026 9am-12pm
• February 5, 2026 9am-12pm

The PFAC: Updates

At our November DHM Patient and Family Advisory Council meeting, Mia Awan shared her work on creating an arts-based reflective space for medical students to understand the hidden curriculum of medical training. And Archna Eniasivam and Martha Ockenfels-Martinez visited the council to discuss the topic of managing chronic pain while hospitalized. The PFAC discussed which medical and non-medical approaches have worked for them in managing chronic pain while hospitalized. This conversation will inform Social Medicine's efforts to support the divisional goal of helping hospitalists care for people with chronic pain. 

If you'd like to visit the PFAC as a guest or presenter, email Martha to be added to the next available meeting!

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

Photo of PFAC members

Archna Eniasivam and former DHMer Katie Raffel were co-authors on a perspective piece advocating for applying a restorative lens to patients' experience of bias within clinical settings. 

Archna Eniasivam in conjunction with colleagues through the HOMERuN HEARS working group wrote a perspective piece underscoring the need for strategic adaptation to sustain health equity initiatives amid increasingly challenging political and institutional environments.

Cindy Lai and co-authors published an article in Academic Medicine describing clerkship directors' roles and experiences with advising medical students applying for internal medicine residency. 

Trevor Jensen was an author on a study on perspectives of Point-of-Care Ultrasound Credentialing and Privileging published in JAMA Network Open.

Trevor Jensen was an author on a position statement from SHM defining standard image criteria for Point of Care Ultrasound images published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

James Harrison has published a community engaged research project that partnered with stakeholders to prioritize research topics for community health centers including federally qualified health centers. This work was published in the Journal of Clinical & Translational Science.

Tim Judson and coauthors published a study in Health Affairs Forefront evaluating the first year of a new Medicare value-based payment program called MIPS Value Pathways.

Andy Auerbach and Himali Weerahandi authored an article titled "Patient Safety During Transitions: Identifying and Mitigating Risks" for the Medical Clinics of North America issue on Care Transitions.