Monthly Newsletter | June 2026

Allison Bond was selected to be the inaugural Division of Infectious Diseases Director of Quality Improvement and Innovation.

Meet DHM

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

Seth Blumberg was awarded a grant of $3.6M over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for a project entitled, "Advancing analytical tools to quantify and mitigate the risk for transitioning from episodic to endemic transmission for emerging infections."

Kristen Kipps was recognized with a PRIDE Experience Award.

Liz Dzeng presented an oral presentation on her and her team's work at the European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) World Congress in Prague, Czechia entitled, "Differences in Clinical Decision-Making Norms Surrounding Life-Sustaining Treatments for Persons Living with Advanced Dementia in the United States and United Kingdom."

Kristen Kipps with her Real Time Mortality Review team's project was recognized with a Health Equity Award at the UCSF Health Improvement Symposium.

Anand Habib was awarded the Milton W. Hamolsky Award for his abstract "Healthcare-Systemwide Causes and Severity of Moral Distress among a National Sample of Practicing Physicians–A Cross-sectional Survey” at the 2026 SGIM national meeting in Washington, DC. The Hamolsky Award recognizes junior faculty within the first two years of their first faculty appointment who deliver exceptional scientific oral presentations at the SGIM annual 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 event:

• Stanyan End of the Year Happy Hour on June 18 from 4:00-6:30pm at Underdogs Tres

June 4 Karaoke at Taisho

Join the CBC team or suggest an event here!

Equity & Belonging in Hospital Medicine

On May 19th, we had our first Hospitalist Day at the Capitol

Archna Eniasivam, Ashish Gandhi, Martha Ockenfels-Martinez, Monisha Bhatia, and Ritu Bansal represented UCSF at the Capitol in Sacramento for our first DHM Advocacy Day on May 19th. We met with two policymakers' legislative health aides, and voiced support for research funding, tracking MediCal disenrollment, and increasing awareness of hospital budget impacts in legislative decision-making. We also raised concerns around ED boarding as a public health issue, and requested additional funding in this year's budget for public hospitals, in light of anticipated shortfalls with Medicaid funding. It was an amazing day of reconnection with our purpose as patient care advocates. The DHM Advocacy Advisory Board and Social Medicine will continue to plan opportunities like this for DHM to bring the voice of hospitalists directly to lawmakers and advocate for healthcare access, public hospitals, and equitable care for vulnerable patient populations — we'll announce those opportunities as they arise. Please email Martha if you'd like to become more involved in the DHM Advocacy Advisory Board!

Advocates in Action for Farmworker Health

James Harrison and team have been working with Central Valley community partners, and this partnership has led to the creation of a policy video advocating for improved healthcare access for farmworkers. Building on findings from their ongoing HERE with Community project, they collaborated with community partners in the Central Valley to co-create a video that highlights why healthcare access remains a critical priority and includes a clear call to action. English and Spanish versions of the video are available here.

Skill Building: Research with Immigrant and Vulnerable Populations

Join the CTSI Community Engagement Team for a webinar on "Conducting Research with Immigrant and Vulnerable Populations: Guidance for Researchers," on Tuesday June 23, 2026 11:00 AM. Sign up here with this link.

Alliance Health Project Opportunities

The Alliance Health Project — a clinic within UCSF dedicated to supporting the mental health of the LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities — is recruiting new Community Advisory Board (CAB) members! If you're interested in joining the CAB, please email AHP Director Will Hua by June 30 for the current recruitment cycle. Additionally there are other ways to volunteer at AHP, including supporting their annual Art for AIDS gala fundraiser, becoming a certified volunteer HIV test counselor, or joining their AIDS Walk team — more information on volunteering here.

The DHM PFAC: Updates

At our May Patient and Family Advisory Council meeting, Yalda Shahram and Julie Maxson facilitated a discussion on an updated flyer for Stanyan patients related to patient preparedness for discharge. This is their second visit with the PFAC, which has resulted in a more patient and family-centered flyer to support the discharge process.

If you have a project, concept, or product — like communications materials — you'd like to receive patient and family feedback on, email Martha to schedule your visit to the PFAC!

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

James Harrison and Andy Auerbach are co-authors on the Caregiver and Patient Input for Quality and Safety (C-PIQS) Pilot Study published in the Journal of Patient Safety. This study assesses the feasibility of a text message-enabled safety reporting tool among adult inpatients and caregivers at a public hospital.

Logan Pierce and colleagues recently published a study in BMJ Quality & Safety evaluating a large language model (LLM) approach to screening for intra-abdominal surgical site infections using perioperative clinical notes and microbiology data. Compared with traditional electronic health record screening methods, the LLM-based workflow substantially reduced the need for manual chart review while maintaining extremely high sensitivity for detecting infections.

Margaret Fang and Anna Parks wrote about "right-sizing VTE prophylaxis" in hospitalized medical patients in JAMA Network Open.

Priya Prasad, Colin Hubbard, Tiffany Lee, and Andy Auerbach published a study along with other UPSIDE colleagues which found that sepsis was not associated with greater risk of diagnostic error or individual diagnostic process faults within a cohort of medicine patients who died and/or went to the ICU.

Margaret Fang was a co-author on "Bleeding-related quality of life in older adults: Psychometric evaluation of the HEmorrhage Life Impact indeX (HELIX)" published in Thrombosis Research that described development of a new patient-reported outcome measure of bleeding-related quality of life in people taking anticoagulants.