UCSF has an opportunity to fulfill its promise towards advancing health worldwide by uplifting a healthy climate towards immigrants, upholding international asylum law and other human rights protections.
The UCSF Health and Human Rights Initiative (HHRI) brings together leading clinicians from across UCSF's ecosystem so that these multidisciplinary partners with decades-long expertise in health services for immigrants can collaborate towards health equity. UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, and the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics, along with members of the Trauma Recovery Center / Survivors International, UCSF School of Medicine, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and clinics, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and many others have united in an unprecedented commitment to address this challenge to our community’s and country’s health.
HHRI is now part of the Institute of Global Health Sciences (IGHS), which works to improve health and reduce inequities locally and globally. IGHS is a champion and innovator in academic global health, with a deep commitment to improving the health of marginalized communities. HHRI and IGHS both work to solve global health problems so that people can live healthy, productive lives by: Applying high-quality scientific evidence to inform health policies and practices; Training future leaders in global health; Building the capacity of our implementing partners.
When founded in 2019, our first efforts included a medical student elective on refugee health and a monthly clinic offering pro bono medical and psychological forensic affidavits. HHRI then sponsored a community-wide training to catalyze skill development for local health professionals in forensic affidavit international standards. To expand the national reach of its professional trainings, HHRI became a founding co-leader of the Asylum Medicine Training Initiative which trains clinicians to meet the need for forensic medical evaluations of people seeking humanitarian protection. Today, HHRI’s work includes providing forensic evaluation services, training UCSF clinicians, and capacity building for community based implementing partners. Our UCSF training initiatives have expanded to include mentored training for UCSF faculty, a medical student elective, and a new resident elective launched in 2024. Our work building clinical capacity with our community-based implementing partners ranges from the local - such as SF Bay Area consultation and trainings supported by the Office of Refugee Resettlement Support for Trauma-Affected Refugees Program - to the international trainings coordinated through the Border Humanitarian Health Initiative.
2024 Annual Report
