Dear UCSF Community,

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is Monday, January 16. This federal holiday offers us dedicated time to reflect on the meaning of Dr. King’s legacy—and to carry on his tradition of service to humanity. In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. King said:

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”

In today’s turbulent world, with pervasive racism and violence, climate change disasters, and a pandemic that is not yet over, Dr. King’s brilliant words can sustain and encourage us. At UCSF our mission is to advance health worldwide, and we understand deeply how inequity and injustice adversely affect the health of individuals and whole communities. We know—and learn more with each passing day—what is needed to facilitate health: food, housing, education, dignity, equality, freedom.

As members of this dynamic organization, we are committed to achieving health equity by addressing the underlying causes of health disparities; we also have pledged to dismantle structural racism within the University. Across UCSF, individuals and teams are working on a wide array of projects in service of the inextricable goals of health and justice. You can see some recent highlights in this report.

To celebrate Dr. King’s legacy, we encourage all members of UCSF to participate in one...