Dear UCSF Community,
I want to share some exciting news about a new initiative we are launching that will bring together UCSF’s significant scientific and clinical expertise to help transform therapies for patients with the most challenging diagnoses.
The UCSF Living Therapeutics Initiative (LTI) will serve as a catalyst for developing innovative new therapies based on living cells. This is akin to selecting or programming living cells to perform specific tasks that will help patients overcome debilitating or deadly diseases and conditions. The initiative aims to advance both the science and the treatments available to our patients and others around the world. I have asked Alan Ashworth, PhD, FRS, president of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, to direct this effort.
UCSF is a world leader in the basic science behind cellular therapies and we have already begun to use them in our clinical practices, including exciting work in treatments for some cancers and sickle cell disease. This initiative will expand upon these and other therapies to treat a wide range of diseases and conditions, such as brain tumors, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, immune disorders ranging from asthma to multiple sclerosis, and diabetes, offering new hope for patients.
Over the past few years, we have raised philanthropic gifts and made institutional investments totaling more than $250 million to support these efforts across the University. And just last month, we...
Dear UCSF Community:
We are pleased to announce that UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences’ new home is scheduled to open this fall.
Adjacent to our Mission Bay campus at 675 18th Street, the 150,000-square-foot Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building is the culmination of our vision to integrate physical and mental health by eliminating boundaries that have isolated psychiatry and behavioral sciences from other medical disciplines.
Embedding mental health services into the overall health care system also will help reduce the stigma that can be associated with seeking help for mental health. Younger patients, in particular, will be able to go to one space to see their pediatrician, psychiatrist, psychologist, and other key members of their care team.
The five-story, light-filled building is supported by a gift of nearly $60 million from philanthropists John Pritzker and Lisa Stone Pritzker, longtime supporters of UCSF, and named in honor of John’s sister, Nancy Friend Pritzker, who died by suicide at age 24 during a depressive episode in 1972. You can read more about the project here.
As previously communicated, we are relocating outpatient services currently offered at UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics (LPPHC) at Parnassus Heights, which are located on the planned site of UCSF Health’s new hospital at the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights. Our inpatient adult care program, which offers acute psychiatric service for adults 18 years and older, will move to UCSF...
Dear UCSF Community,
Throughout this year, we have been working on solutions to help support UCSF learners and employees who face financial hardships due to the pandemic. I am pleased to share with you that we will be providing a second round of COVID-19 relief funds, with a focus on those who earn $95,000 or less per year.
The additional funding we have secured enables us to provide up to $1,000 in tax-free funds to assist those in our UCSF community with the greatest need. The application process for this second round of funds will open on Monday, December 7.
This second round of relief funding is an extension of the UCSF COVID-19 Relief Program that we created in September to help members of our UCSF community who need help with expenses such as child care and housing payments. I am grateful for the generosity of our donors who helped us establish the UCSF COVID-19 Relief Program, and we continue to raise funds.
During this season of sharing, I encourage all those who are able to give to the UCSF COVID-19 Qualified Disaster Relief Fund to donate here. You can find details about eligibility for the new round of COVID-19 Relief Program funding on the coronavirus website. For questions about the program, please email [email protected]. We will continue to look for ways to help as many members of our UCSF community, as the pandemic evolves.
I am heartened by the...
Dear UCSF Community,
I am writing to announce a new relief program for UCSF employees making $75,000 or less who are facing financial hardship during the pandemic. COVID-19 has created numerous challenges for members of our community, but the impact of this public health crisis has not been evenly felt by all. We have established the UCSF COVID-19 Relief Program to help the most economically vulnerable members of the UCSF community during this extraordinary time.
UCSF employees (and those on temporary leave or approved Leave of Absence) are eligible to apply for financial grants up to $1,000 for critical, temporary, and unforeseen financial hardships that result from the COVID-19 pandemic. Students seeking assistance are eligible to apply for a similar grant through the UCSF COVID-19 Relief Program for Students. These grants do not need to be repaid and are not taxable.
The program has been established with philanthropic funding that is specifically intended to support UCSF’s response to the pandemic. Visit the UCSF COVID-19 Relief Program webpage to learn more and apply. For those who are in a position to help provide additional funding for this effort, please visit the UCSF COVID-19 Qualified Disaster Relief Fund. We will continue to help as many people in the UCSF community as we can, placing priority on those with the greatest need.
I have been humbled by the many generous donors who...
Dear UCSF Community,
We are pleased to share the exciting news that UCSF has selected two highly regarded architectural firms to serve as the design team for the new hospital at Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights.
The firms, Herzog & de Meuron, a Switzerland-based architectural firm known for its innovative design, and HDR, a multidisciplinary, human-centered architecture practice, bring significant expertise in designing health care facilities in urban settings around the world.
The architects will help us realize our vision for the hospital of the future as a holistic health care setting designed around the needs of the patient, connected to the natural environs of Parnassus Heights and the community. The architectural team will work with UCSF, with input from the local community, to design a hospital that is integrated with our world-renowned research and teaching enterprise, and aesthetically complementary with the neighborhood.
Importantly, the new hospital will expand our capacity to serve more patients who are referred to UCSF for the highly specialized care we offer. The number of patients we have had to turn away due to a lack of bed capacity at Parnassus Heights is approaching 3,000 a year. You can read more online about the new hospital and the architects.
The UC Regents recently approved us to start work on our new hospital, a project launched with a generous...
Dear UCSF Community:
I am delighted to announce that Joan and Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, through the Weill Family Foundation, have made a $106 million gift to establish the Weill Neurohub to speed the development of new treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases.
The network will build upon the tremendous strengths of UCSF, UC Berkeley, and University of Washington (UW) as it forges and nurtures collaborations between neuroscientists, researchers, and clinicians working in an array of disciplines – including engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, and mathematics – and across institutions.
This new gift expands and amplifies the Weills’ considerable existing commitment to the neurosciences at UCSF, which began with their 2016 gift of $185 million to establish the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and continued with another gift of $5 million.
Operating in concert with the UCSF Weill Institute, the Weill Neurohub will expand the breadth of collaboration through partnerships with these two additional premier West Coast research institutions. It will provide funding for faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students at UW, UC Berkeley, and UCSF who are working on cross-disciplinary projects, including funding for high-risk, high-reward proposals that are particularly innovative and less likely to find support through conventional funding sources.
Stephen L. Hauser, MD, director of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, will serve as one of two co-directors of the Weill Neurohub along with UC Berkeley’s Ehud “Udi” Isacoff, PhD. Together with Tom Daniel, PhD, at UW, they will serve on the Weill Neurohub’s Leadership Committee...
Dear Members of the UCSF Community,
We are delighted to share the news that UCSF has received a $30 million donation to launch a rigorous academic research program on homelessness. This new effort aims to build an evidence-based body of knowledge in the field; to train the next generation of homelessness researchers; and to serve as a resource for policy makers and others trying to solve the problem.
The gift, from Marc and Lynne Benioff, establishes the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, which will be led by Margot Kushel, MD, professor of medicine. Kushel, a nationally known expert on homelessness, is director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, where the initiative will be housed. Joshua Bamberger, MD, adjunct professor of family and community medicine, will serve as the initiative’s associate director.
Nearly one-quarter of the nation’s homeless people live in the state of California. As we all are acutely aware, many members of our local communities are struggling with this challenge. While efforts will initially focus on the Bay Area, ultimately the intent is to make research findings available to policy makers and others grappling with the issue across the nation.
In our region, perhaps the gravest threats to health are due to poverty, discrimination and, particularly, homelessness. At UCSF, our collective work in research and health care is focused on reducing inequities in health outcomes. We rely on visionary partners and donors like the Benioffs to help us...
Dear Colleagues,
We write to share our thanks for the unwavering commitment of our faculty and staff to providing the best quality care for our patients and for the positive impact this is having on patients’ lives. While this is always true, we recognize that the last few months have been particularly challenging as we have seen a record number of inpatients.
For the first time in our history, more than 800 inpatients are receiving care in our hospitals each day. This unprecedented patient demand is a reflection of the tremendous accomplishments of our faculty and staff in improving patients’ health, their experiences with UCSF Health, as well as, the operations of our organization.
Patients have many choices about where to receive care for themselves and their families, and doctors have options about where to refer patients. Our numbers demonstrate the confidence of the community in UCSF Health and UC San Francisco.
To meet the growing demand, we expect to continue to add clinical capacity – either within our own facilities or with our partners. We have started to expand our clinical programs into space at our affiliates, such as St. Mary’s Medical...
Dear Members of the UCSF Community,
We are honored to share an important announcement for UCSF: The Helen Diller Foundation has made a $500 million commitment to UCSF to build a new, world-class hospital on our Parnassus Heights campus.
This extraordinary commitment will enable us to begin the extensive planning process for a state-of-the-art, 21st-century hospital that is designed and equipped to provide an unsurpassed level of care for our patients. The Diller family’s generosity also is a testament to the excellence of the clinicians and staff who have made UCSF Medical Center the highest ranked hospital in California and the fifth-best in the country, according to US News & World Report. The new hospital will enable us to relocate inpatient care, currently at Moffitt Hospital, by 2030 and meet the state’s seismic requirements.
In honor of this remarkable commitment, current and future clinical buildings at the Parnassus campus — including the new hospital, Moffitt-Long Hospital and the Crede Ambulatory Care Center — will be renamed the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights. You can read more about this commitment and the vision for the new hospital at UCSF.edu.
UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center will be part of a planned broader revitalization of our flagship Parnassus Heights campus that also will modernize facilities supporting our research and education priorities. As we embark on this once-in-a-generation planning process for the Parnassus campus, we will draw upon input from you — our faculty, staff, students — as well as other stakeholders in our community.
The new commitment...
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
On Friday, I announced the launch of UCSF: The Campaign in my annual State of the University address.
I send my thanks to those of you who gathered at Parnassus, Mission Bay, Oakland, and Fresno, as well as those of you who tuned in online. My appreciation also goes to Drs. Hana El-Samad and Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who joined me to help explain the importance of this comprehensive fundraising campaign to our shared future. If you were unable to attend or watch live, you can watch or read about the event online.
While there were many important topics to cover, the launch of UCSF: The Campaign took center stage. Through this campaign, we will raise $5 billion to attract, retain, and support brilliant faculty members and students and solve the most challenging problems in biology and human health. Thanks to our visionary supporters, we have already raised nearly $3 billion, positioning us more than halfway to our goal.
As much as the campaign focuses on building the University’s endowment, it also helps us raise our voice in a new and vivid way. Together, we must revolutionize health care and improve lives in our communities as well as solve some of the most complex health problems around the world. We are speaking out for the most vulnerable and standing up for the importance of science. By raising our voice through this campaign, we have an unprecedented opportunity and...