UCSF in the Community: An Obligation and Opportunity
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Janet maldanado checks a man for skin cancer during a free screening.
To this end, UCSF is following up on several of the recommendations made by the task force, which was headed by Kevin Grumbach, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. UCSF recently launched the University-Community Partnerships Program, which will "champion civic engagement and provide visible and influential leadership for community partnerships," as well as serve as a central clearinghouse and coordinating center for these activities. To guide the program, UCSF has formed a University-Community Partnerships Council to serve in an advisory role to develop the principles, plans and priorities of UCSF's community-based programs and to review progress. Consisting of 10 UCSF representatives and 10 members of the community, the council is charged with improving the University's presence and participation in community partnerships an addressing community needs. See story on council here. As UCSF and its many community partners can attest, partnerships are by nature mutually beneficial and, to be successful, depend on sharing a common interest and building trust. When John Nickens, PhD, clinical director of the Progress Foundation, a residential care provider in San Francisco for the severely mentally ill, needed to integrate primary care services with mental health care, he called upon the UCSF School of Nursing. At that time, faculty in the school's Department of Community Health Systems needed teaching sites for their students. The resulting 11-year UCSF-Progress Foundation partnership has had multifold benefits, Nickens said. "Access to primary care has resulted in fewer visits to medical emergency rooms, saving millions of dollars for the community health system," he said. "Clients also have learned, through one-to-one relationships with the nurses, how to understand and manage their medical conditions, which has allowed for more successful and more enduring community stays. Lastly, clients who otherwise might have been retained in inpatient confinement have been able to access community treatment programs due to the presence of primary care services on-site in the residential treatment program." For its part, UCSF is able to offer its nursing students an opportunity to learn and practice primary care skills in a community setting, enhancing the likelihood of similar professional service as postgraduates, and sensitizing future nurse practitioners to the issues faced by persons who use the publicly funded health care system, he pointed out. "The Progress Foundation has been a nice match for nursing faculty," said Gerri Collins-Bride, a clinical professor and vice chair of the Department of Community Health Systems. "We work with the Progress Foundation to empower the mentally ill to take control of their lives, to help them learn to manage their symptoms." In recognition of this successful partnership, both Nickens and Collins-Bride have been named members of the University-Community Partnerships Council. "This partnership has grown tremendously over the years," said Collins-Bride. "We're very proud that our model of care for the mentally ill has been adopted locally, and is considered a national best practices program." Over the next week, UCSF Today will run stories about other best practices in community partnerships. Photo by Elisabeth Fall