Diversity in the Divisions

The Division of Endocrinology has incorporated speakers who are working on health equity projects into their Grand Rounds and are including consideration of DEI and social justice activities or clinical work when reviewing fellowship candidates. They recently launched a DEI newsletter to provide resources and updates across the Division.

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UCSF Health

The Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF Health supports more than two dozen projects that address health equity topics such as aging, food insecurity, COVID outcomes, and bias in clinical notes.

The Division also has an anti-racist task force, and their social medicine efforts include training faculty and staff to engage in dialogue, identify gaps, and co-design solutions towards health equity and justice for hospitalized patients. The goal of these endeavors is to improve clinical outcomes, address the social and structural determinants of patients’ health, and build community partnerships.

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ZSFG

The Division of Hospital Medicine at ZSFG is fully integrated into the overall ZSFG hospital-wide efforts, including as members of the equity council, incorporating equity outcomes in QI  projects, and incorporating reflections on the role of bias and racism in clinical care into M&Ms.

A race-conscious approach, a toolkit to ensure equitable curriculum design, and checklists to interrupt bias are all resources used in teaching and supervising students.

Faculty and staff in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at ZSFG have completed extensive diversity champion training and has access to monthly cultural competency sessions. Grand Rounds and the CFAR lecture series features topics on health disparities and equity in HIV medicine.

The Division has focused on the recruitment diverse fellows to the fellowship program and in fellowship equity initiatives, including the creation of a Fellowship Diversity Committee, which promotes community building and skill building across UIM fellows. DEI-focused lectures have also been incorporated into the ID fellows core curriculum.

The Division of Infectious Diseases at UCSF Health supports a DEI Champion as well as a DEI committee made up of both faculty and staff. Faculty meetings include regularly schedule DEI learning activities.

In the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCSF Health, a 10-member Diversity Council is committed to promoting an inclusive and equitable culture that supports and celebrates diversity across DGIM. This includes updating outreach, hiring, retention and attrition policies and creating guidelines to help managers resolve interpersonal issues between employees.

To improve health equity and end health disparities for patients and the community, DGIM engages in legislative advocacy, operates a “food pharmacy” which also distributes nutrition information and provides health cooking demonstrations, and has plans to expand a taxi voucher program for patients with transportation needs.

In academics, curricula have been updated to include social and behavioral medicine seminars, community-engaged advocacy, and health policy.

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Fellows in the Division of Nephrology attend DEI sessions as part of their core curriculum, involving case-based discussions using real life or prepared scenarios, sometimes with guest speakers. Grand Rounds also features diverse speakers, and topics regularly address racial disparities in care. Their research initiatives have expanded to promote antiracism, including study results that have been widely published in both the popular media and the peer reviewed literature.

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The Division of Prevention Science houses an IDEA team, spearheaded by a faculty lead and including a staff representative and a post-doc fellow. With its legacy of HIV/AIDS advocacy and LGBTQ+ activism, the Division supports its commitment through an anti-racism working group and a small grants program. Their toolkit also includes climate surveys, annual mini-retreats and biweekly working group meetings.

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Our cardiology fellowship program has a similarly strong commitment to diversity at all levels. We have partnered with the office of diversity at UCSF leadership to enhance diversity among our trainees and faculty.

Diversity and inclusion to us means not only considering race/ethnicity/gender and underrepresented groups in medicine and cardiology but also an individual's background and the distance traveled or hardships traversed when applying to our program. We understand that a workforce of physicians who better understand the culture and customs of patients from all walks of life has a positive impact on patient care, education, and research. 

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Everyone at DGIM cares deeply about each other and our patients, as well as social & racial justice, and serving marginalized populations.  We have a Social Justice, Advocacy & Community Engagement committee to tackle real-world issues. We have social justice programs like Food Pharmacy to address food insecurity in our patients.  We have monthly Anti-Racism Town Halls. We have researchers addressing healthcare for racial/ethnic, aging, sexual & gender minority populations as well as linguistically diverse groups.

Find out more about General Internal Medicine