Our JMP2s went to Washington D.C. in the Spring of 2024 for advocacy work. The goal of the trip is to build a deeper understanding of how physicians and health professionals can be involved in policy change that helps advance health equity, social justice and racial justice.

LifeLong Medical Care provides high-quality health, dental, and social services to underserved people of all ages; creates models of care for the elderly, people with disabilities and families; and advocates for continuous improvements in the health of our communities.Description goes here

Located within the DreamCatcher Youth Shelter, The Dream Clinic is a collaboration with the Roots Community Clinic where youth can receive immediate primary medical care without leaving the DreamCatcher campus.

Founded in 1981 by JMP students, the Suitcase Clinic provides care to people experiencing homelessness in Berkeley & Oakland.

A partnership between BRIDGE Housing and Insight Housing (formerly Berkeley Food & Housing Project), Berkeley Way Apartments and The Hope Center are two innovative, mixed-income developments that address a broad range of housing needs.

The Institute for Healing and Justice in Medicine began with a series of conversations among Noor Chadha, Bernie Lim, and Maddy Kane, all medical and graduate students at the Joint Medical Program with UCSF School of Medicine and UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Frustrated by the various hierarchal outlets of knowledge production in Western medicine, we sought to create an interdisciplinary, centralized hub for work related to social justice and community activism in medicine that can be appreciated by, contributed to, and accessible to people of all backgrounds.

Justin Lopez, JMP3 volunteers with CYFAM.

MISSION: The mission of the Council of Young Filipinx Americans in Medicine (CYFAM) is to promote the leadership development of young Filipinx American physicians and trainees, reinforce the educational pipeline, and address structural inequities in health through advocacy, scholarship, and community partnership. CYFAM's vision is to embolden physician leaders to amplify the voice of our members, patients, and community. We will unify the diverse lived experiences of the young Filipinx American physician community. We will equip and empower every Filipinx American medical student, trainee, and physician to be an effective change agent in tackling our community's most pressing health priorities.

JMP student AC Fernández volunteers with Quetzales de Salud, a coalition between health care students at universities across the country. Quetzales de Salud is a student-run immigrant advocacy organization that helps connect undocumented immigrants with health care services. We provide longitudinal case management services in Spanish, as well as mental health, food security, and financial assistance programs.

JMP studetn Meredith Klashman volunteers with Medical Students for Choice. Mer writes, “through my work with Medical Students for Choice at UCSF, I have had the opportunity to plan a reproductive choices elective, which supplements the curriculum with sessions on contraception, medication abortion, procedural abortion, and reproductive justice. We've additionally worked to advocate for more abortion precepting opportunities during F2 (clinical years) at UCSF. “

JMP student Riya Desai volunteered as a representative of WC4BL with this organization and led the public health working group. The #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition came together in June 2020 after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) transferred over 100 individuals from a known COVID-19 hotspot to San Quentin State Prison, causing what soon became the biggest coronavirus outbreak in the nation to date. Organizers, loved ones, and several social justice organizations came together to amplify the demands of our currently incarcerated community members at San Quentin. We continue to demand large-scale releases (without categorical exclusions based on conviction or sentence) across all California state prisons, jails, and ICE detention centers. Decarceration remains the only public health solution to this global pandemic inside and beyond prison walls.

JMP Director Jyothi Marbin MD is partnering with the Sidewalk School and Global Response Management to run a telehealth clinic in Mexico at the US border. The clinic provides critically needed services to asylum seeking children and families.

Osagie K. Obasogie is the Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law with a joint appointment in the Joint Medical Program and School of Public Health.

Obasogie’s scholarly interests include Constitutional law, policing and police use of force, sociology of law, bioethics, race and inequality in law and medicine, and reproductive and genetic technologies. He recently participated in this webinar on “Lessons in Abolition Work: What can social care learn?”

Dr. Hahn is a vocal advocate for social justice. An article from the Bixby Center notes that: “To fight for equity on the structural level, Dr. Hahn collaborates with a group of other doctors to help root out centuries of racism that are baked into medical practice. “I’m trying to bring an anti-racist perspective into medicine, which is hard because medicine’s very roots are steeped in racism.” Certain practices within medicine are based on the flawed notion that there’s a genetic basis for race, despite all evidence to the contrary. One example is the estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) test that measures kidney function. It has traditionally been reported with two values, with the numbers “adjusted up” for Black patients. Supposedly race-based differences in this test can likely be attributed to higher muscle mass, yet labs use race as a proxy. Putting the focus on race rather than actual biological differences can have serious consequences for Black patients, like delaying referral to a kidney specialist or placement on a transplant list.

Changing the way people have been practicing medicine for decades isn’t easy, but the group scored their first big victory last year when Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital became only the 2nd hospital system in the nation to stop reporting race in these kidney function tests. They’ve already heard from other hospitals inspired by the work they’re doing and eager to replicate it. That test is just one on a long list, but Dr. Hahn and her colleagues aren’t slowing down any time soon.”

JMP Alum Dr. Ayanna Bennett is the Founding Director of the Office of Health Equity and Chief Health Equity Officer at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Dr. Bennett developed the Office after a career working for racial equity in many different venues of healthcare. In 2004, Dr. Bennett co-founded a non-profit in the San Francisco Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood called the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic, co-designed with community members to serve Bayview youth who had less access to care than youth in any other neighborhood. Dr. Bennett led 3rd St as its Medical Director and then Executive Director for 12 years, while also working as a practicing pediatrician in the East Bay. In 2015, Dr. Bennett moved fully into public health administration as part of the leadership team at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She served a variety of leadership roles before establishing the Office of Health Equity in 2019. The Office of Health Equity works to make lasting systemic changes in the way public health and health care serve marginalized communities, and to directly eliminate racially and socially mediated health disparities. That kind of change requires us to challenge the policies, practices and priorities that we've inherited from our past, admit to the racism and violence of the inequities they have created, and to make choices that are deliberately restorative and reparative of those wounds.

Dr. Kim Rhoads is a JMP alum. “When the COVID-19 pandemic was surging through our most vulnerable populations, including the Black communities throughout the Bay Area, Dr. Kim Rhoads, Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, UCSF, focused her attention on an equitable COVID-19 response for our hardest hit community members.

Through a partnership with UMOJA Health, LifeLong Medical Care and other community-based organizations in the East Bay, Dr. Rhoads and UMOJA began to focus in earnest on an equitable response to COVID. One of the most effective ways to do that was to bring healthcare to community members where they live. Last fall, when the first UMOJA COVID testing site in the Eastmont area of Oakland was cancelled due to smoke caused by lightning storms, Dr. Rhoads pivoted quickly to the idea of creating “pop-up” sites in different locations throughout the East Bay in the areas hit the hardest by the pandemic.” (excerpt from Comm Health Center Network website)