Hello all! Archna and Martha here with some updates from the social medicine team:
Landscape Mapping of Health Equity Work: We are working on creating a landscape map of all the various health equity, anti-racism, and DEI-focused projects folks in the division are working on. This will give us a better sense of what gaps exist around structural and social medicine needs, as well as give our division a visual on the great work being done. Do you have a project you are working on around issues of justice, anti-racism, social medicine, or health equity? We’d love to know more about it so we can include it in the landscape map! Please email Martha @ Martha.Ockenfels-Martinez@ucsf.edu
Centering Our Patients and Communities: We are exploring models for better incorporating community voice, needs, and direction into our work. Our team has been reflecting on The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership (developed by Rosa González of Facilitating Power) to help guide our approach to centering community. With this framework in mind, we are currently developing a pilot program with GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice, that builds off of their Healers at the Gate program. This has been a collaborative project guided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/IDEO.org Health Equity Collective. The UCSF team on this project includes Archna, Liz, James and Martha. Additionally, Nishita, Lev, and others are partnering with the Center for Complexity (RISD) on a different pilot within the same Health Equity Collective. Their team is working on improving the experience for LEP patients and families.
Health Equity and QI/Value and UBLT: Our team has been meeting with Saj, Molly, Armond, and Brandon to explore and strategize on incorporating health equity metrics more deeply into quality and value improvement work. More to come on this front but it’s been great brainstorming together!
DEI Summer Internship: We are thrilled to announce that we will have two interns joining us for eight weeks over the summer: Cesar Torres and Dalena Ngo! If you are interested in potentially mentoring them on a project (June until August) related to health equity, please send us your name, a brief description of the project, and what you imagine would be their role during those eight weeks. We plan to set up 1:1 meetings for them to hear more about the projects during the first week of their internship (Monday June 13th will be Cesar’s first day June 21st will be Dalena‘s first day).
And lastly, please connect with us, anytime and always!
- Martha and Archna
