UCSF Health

Have you seen our mural in Hayes Valley? Artist Maxfield Bala captured so much of what we cherish about San Francisco, from the coast, to the Golden Gate to our health care community.

Please help us celebrate Dr. Nancy Ascher, as she transitions into retirement! Dr. Ascher’s contribution to our community and surgical industry is immeasurable. In 1988 she was recruited to UCSF, where she established the new liver transplant program and was appointed Chief of Transplant. Building an esteemed, multidisciplinary team, she soon transitioned to being Department of Surgery Chair from 1999 to 2016. While tackling the demands of the department, Dr. Ascher always remained active in all surgical areas, and she earned many awards and leadership positions in national committees and societies. Some of her greatest legacies are the countless students, residents and fellows she has trained as a part of the UCSF surgical team. Now, Dr. Ascher is transitioning out of full-time employment into part-time employment. Congratulations on an outstanding career, Dr. Ascher! https://ucsfh.org/4e5uVUT

August is “miracle month” for UCSF patient and patient advocacy consultant Valen Keefer. She celebrated the 22nd anniversary of her kidney transplant with a Taylor Swift themed day on August 13th, and marked her 6-year liver transplant anniversary on August 4th! Valen’s personal journey with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) led her to become an advocate for organ donation, and an advocate for others with PKD. This summer, she was recognized with the American Society of Transplantation (AST) Transplant Advocacy Award at the American Transplant Congress (ATC). Valen is celebrating 20 years of being a patient advocate—helping foster better care, awareness, and support for patients. Through her advocacy, Valen has crisscrossed the U.S. and even traveled to Ireland. She also launched a podcast, called Unpacking the Gift of Life, on her website (www.valenkeefer.com). “I continue to lead with a grateful heart, thankful for my donors, appreciative of modern medicine, and filled with hope for future advancements to help others walking a similar path,” she says.

The doors are open! ✨ Our Bayfront Medical Building at Mission Bay provides easy access to more than 130 clinicians providing primary care, specialty care, urgent care and more.

We’re thrilled to celebrate the opening of our UCSF Health Bayfront Medical Building, which brings new adult urgent care, primary care, same-day surgery and specialty care to the community in a single setting! We look forward to welcoming our first patients on Aug. 27. Located on our Mission Bay campus, the building will house more than 130 physicians, bringing together primary and secondary clinical care for roughly 131,000 patient visits per year, about a third of which will be for new patients. “The Bayfront facility is all about expanding access to the world-class care that UCSF Health is known for and making that care as convenient and comfortable as possible,” UCSF Health President and CEO Suresh Gunasekaran says: “This is more than a building, but a delivery on our promise to the community that leading-edge, compassionate care should be available to anyone who needs it.” Learn more: https://ucsfh.org/4dAkUPY

We can't wait to welcome patients, practitioners and our community to the new, state-of-the-art Bayfront Medical Building, opening soon in Mission Bay! Here's a sneak peek behind the doors.

Pro skateboarder Shawn Connolly had symptoms that he blamed on aging. "But it turned out to be a little more than that.” A trial for Parkinson’s treatment at UCSF “changed my life,” he says. “I can just go through the whole day feeling good.” The new technology, called adaptive deep brain stimulation, or aDBS, is designed to sense Parkinson’s symptoms before they occur, and calibrate the amount of stimulation in the brain needed to prevent them. Over the course of about a year, researchers Dr. Carina Oehrn, Stephanie Cernera, and Dr. Lauren Hammer analyzed Connolly’s brain signals remotely, and found a brain wave signal they could use to track his symptoms as he went about his everyday life. “It was crazy,” Connolly recalls. “I’d be streaming my brain data to them while I’m hanging out getting work done at my house.” The team eventually developed an algorithm that could spot his symptoms as they occurred and adjust his stimulation accordingly. Connolly got his personal algorithm in late 2023. “I had no motor fluctuations for eight hours straight,” he says. “I felt fine. I went for a long walk. I drove. I came home and made dinner, all that stuff.” Now that he has enough energy to run summer skate camps, he looks forward to resuming deeper involvement with the San Francisco Skate Club! https://ucsfh.org/3WPGE3e

Registration is open for the 8th annual Bay Area Reproductive Mental Health Conference, which is back in person this year in San Francisco! This year's event centers on the interface between obstetrics, gynecology and psychiatry, featuring national experts on topics including marijuana use in the menopause transition, yoga in pregnant patients with mental illness, the current state of Black maternal mental health, assessment of trauma and loss in the perinatal period, and a discussion of identity changes in motherhood —particularly in minority populations. 

"The most meaningful part of this work, for me, is transforming the patient experience. Art has a way of enhancing their healing process," Amy Van Cleve says. Van Cleve is the director of Art for Recovery and was honored with a Founders' Day Award earlier this year for her 20 years of service, working toward making Art for Recovery available to all cancer patients in the Bay Area—and beyond.

We're excited to announce the launch of the UCSF Career Pathways initiative, which will train 2,000 local youth and workers over the next five years for careers in health care. We're grateful to the Crankstart Foundation for their generous support and to our partners: Bay Area Medical Academy, City College of San Francisco, JVS - Bay Area, San Francisco Unified School District, Young Community Developers, and Bayview Hunters Point YMCA. UCSF Health https://lnkd.in/eZqzXNsk