Monthly Newsletter | July 2026

Welcome Jake Hawskworth, who officially joined our division as the new Division Manager. Jake brings nearly two decades of progressive healthcare leadership experience from Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington. Most recently, he oversaw operations and finances for multiple academic divisions, including Pediatric Hospital Medicine. In that role, he directed 24/7 hospitalist staffing across four hospitals and managed coverage for Washington's first pediatric skilled nursing facility.

Meet DHM

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

Tim Judson was elected to the UCSF Executive Medical Board as a Member At Large. 

Himali Weerahandi is now the Research Committee Chair for the Society of General Internal Medicine.

Liz Dzeng, along with her mentees, Jason Batten (UCLA) and Teva Brender (UCSF Pulmonary Critical Care fellow) were featured in the Geripal podcast where they spoke about their recent paper in JAMA Network Open on "How We Limit Non-beneficial Life Sustaining Treatments."

Anand Habib was interviewed for a recent Medscape news article on the moral distress that physicians may experience when individuals for whom they care experience or at risk of medical debt from the care that physician provides. In the piece, Anand shares his own experience with surprise medical bills.

Applications are Open for the California HEAL Social Medicine Fellowship! This one-year program connects, trains, and mentors early-career physicians to make meaningful improvements in the health of underserved communities in Fresno, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. Nominate a Resident or Physician you think would be a good fit. To learn more about the program visit our webpage.

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.

June 13 DHM End of the Year Picnic at Robin Williams Meadow

June 24 Fellowship Farewell Dinner

June 25 World Cup CBC Watch Party at Kezar Pub

July 1 DHM Staff Happy Hour at Pizzetta Napoletana

July 1 DHM World Cup Futbol Club Presidio Bowling Watch party

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 blog post about the recent advocacy day in Sacramento:

When Hospitalists Go to the Capitol 

Reflections on our first DHM Advocacy Day at the State Capitol on May 19th, 2026 from Ritu Bansal



We stepped off the Amtrak that morning feeling surprisingly ready. The ride from the Bay had been unexpectedly cozy — good views, good company, and a captive hour to prepare, strategize, and work through what we actually wanted to say when we got into the room. By the time Sacramento's skyline came into view, Archna, Ashish, Martha, Monisha, and I had turned a train car into a rolling caucus. 

After a short walk we got in line outside the Capitol building, and met Angie. 

She had done this many times before — a seasoned lobbyist who spotted a group of enthusiastic first timers from a mile away. Her advice was simple and sharp: be precise, make connections, and offer expertise on the topics you know best so that aides can come back to you later. In other words, don't try to cover everything. Be the person they remember for one thing and make sure they have your name. 



We carried that into every meeting that we had that day with legislative staffers. [Read more here.] 

The DHM PFAC: Updates

For our June Patient and Family Advisory Council meeting, we held our annual in-person dinner with the PFAC! Many of the PFAC members were able to join, and we had a great time debriefing the last year of PFAC's work while we also brainstormed some ideas for the year ahead. If you’re new to the division or you missed the PFAC's Monday meeting presentation on June 1st, you can ​catch the recording here​.

[Photo from June 2026 PFAC dinner at Lavash]

If you'd like to join the PFAC 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

Anand Habib was the second author on a scoping review recently published in Medical Care entitled "Associations Between Hospital Mergers and Hospital-Level Nursing Factors, Nurse Well-Being, and Nurse-Sensitive Patient Safety and Quality-of-Care Outcomes." Although high-quality quantitative data were sparse, he and his co-authors found that nurses often subjectively experienced the organizational changes ensuing from mergers as fraying trust in leadership, eroding institutional identity, decreasing their morale, and fostering fear over job security.

Nora Hutchinson recently published a paper in The American Journal of Bioethics examining whether prospective clinical trial participants should be informed about the possibility of early trial termination. The article proposes a framework for disclosure aimed at supporting participant decision-making and promoting transparency and trust in clinical research.

Nora Hutchinson recently published an invited commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine discussing barriers to equitable participation in clinical trials. The piece highlights structural factors that limit research participation and argues for more inclusive, community-engaged approaches to clinical research.

Andy Lai is a coauthor on a multicenter randomized trial published in NEJM Evidence evaluating whether presenting diagnostic test results as interval likelihood ratios improved vignette-based clinical decisions. It was also accompanied by two editorials.