Sylvie Sturm

Being a medical student or a health professional of any kind involves certain inherent occupational hazards. The end result may be a motor vehicle accident stemming from lack of sleep; getting cancer after year of exposure to numerous toxic, mutagenic, and frequently carcinogenic drugs (which are paradoxically used to treat cancer); having a spontaneous abortion that is related to the amount of time one has spent in an operating room.

Padma Thapa, a 65-year-old woman living in Nepal, was given a second chance at life in 2018 after receiving surgery for her obstetric fistula, a condition caused by prolonged obstructed labor that causes incontinence, the involuntary leakage of stool, urine, and blood. Padma developed her condition after experiencing prolonged obstructed labor due to giving birth to her stillborn child at home in the 1970s.

The social determinants of health are the underlying factors that influence our health outside of the doctor’s office, including the environments in which we work, live, and play. And the science is well-documented — when it comes to long-term health, an individual’s zip code is more important than the code in their DNA.

Originally authored by Dr. Amy Levine — Director of UCSF’s Center for Gender Equity — and published in Synapse on May 5, 2006.

When the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa refused to heed the call from the international community to end its racist, immoral and illegal treatment of Black South Africans, the global community deployed the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement to pressure the South African government to comply with international law and human rights.

Student health insurance premiums will increase $565, or 20.4 percent, next year for registered students at UCSF, one of the campuses that have elected to stay with the UC Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP).

Last February, UCSF students received emails about their health coverage that left them stunned, and raised more questions than answers.

Five months ago, the Alliance of Middle Eastern Scientists and Physicians was founded on the UCSF campus by a small group of Arab and Israeli scientists, who were concerned about the tense situation in the Middle East.

After years of internal debate, I finally got my first tattoo. He’s a small lizard, with a topological map design inside, scaling the outer edge of my left ankle. His fine lines and tasteful detail are the work of my incredibly talented cousin and artist, Ally Easter (ig: alzster, look them up!).

How does your brain interpret different sounds as distinct words, instead of a singular mess of phonetics?