Category: Health Policy

  • Environmental Justice and Human Health

    Human health is inseparable from environmental health. Our exposure to toxic environmental chemicals through air, water, food, and consumer products is contributing to a surge in chronic disease (cancer, asthma, diabetes, COPD, etc.), developmental delay, neurodegenerative disease, and infertility. Our climate emergency’s associated catastrophic events (hurricanes, wildfires, floods, famine, etc.) are driving massive human displacement […]

  • Privacy, Practicality, and Potential: The Use of Technology for Healthy Aging

    That wearable fitness device on your wrist is measuring so much more than your exercise levels. Digital tools offer unprecedented opportunities in health research and healthcare but it can come at the cost of privacy. Six days of step counts are enough to identify you among a million other people – and the type of […]

  • Food Industry Manipulation

    Do you want to find out how various food and beverage manufacturers have manipulated science and public health policy over the last 50 years? Now you can with the new searchable archive of food industry documents at the UCSF Industry Documents Library. The Food Industry Documents Archive https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/ is a brand-new collection of over 30,000 […]

  • Evolving Medical Training

    Dr. Rebecca Berman was recently recruited to UCSF to direct the internal medicine residency program, generally considered to be one of the nation’s finest. Dr. Berman comes to UCSF from Harvard, where she directed the primary care residency program at Brigham & Womens Hospital. She sits down with Dr. Bob Wachter, Chair, Department of Medicine, […]

  • Beyond Food and Exercise: the Other Factors in the Obesity Epidemic

    Everything you come in contact with, every second of every day, makes an impact on your health. It’s known as the exposome. It’s a relatively new concept, first defined in 2005. The exposome includes the food you eat, the beauty products you use, the air you breathe, your friends and family, and everything in between. […]

  • The Future of Single-Payer Health Care in California

    Health care is one of the hottest issues in California politics. Last year, state lawmakers shelved a controversial single-payer bill. So, what’s next? California State Assembly Member David Chiu sat down with Dr. Andrew Bindman at UCSF to discuss the complex realities of health care reform. Chiu represents the 17th Assembly District, which covers eastern […]

  • FoodGate: The Problem with the US Food System

    You can’t fix healthcare until you fix health. You can’t fix health until you fix the diet. And you can’t fix the diet until you know what’s wrong. What went wrong? FoodGate. Endocrinologist Robert Lustig, Dentist Cristen Kearns and Health Policy Expert Laura Schmidt team up to explore how the US food system has led […]

  • Superbugs and Antibiotics

    We’ve all heard about superbugs, bacterial infections that don’t respond to antibiotic treatment and wondered what’s going on. When someone falls ill with one of these infections doctors determine which antibiotic to use based on a standard test. But UC Santa Barbara biologist Michael Moore says we may be relying on the wrong test when […]

  • A Life in Medicine

    Healthcare has never been as important to peoples’ lives as it is today. Staggering advances in technology and science stand alongside major changes — and controversies — in policy and payment. In this new series, Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of UCSF’s Department of Medicine, bestselling author, and rated in 2015 by Modern Healthcare magazine as […]

  • Health Reform at the Crossroads

    Democrats and Republicans have been working to create laws that reform the American health care system for decades. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, is the first successful major overhaul of health care since Medicare in 1965. The Act affirms “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security […]