Summer 2019

The UCSF guide to healthy and happy eating; California Poison Control to the rescue; a San Francisco public psychiatrist shares his story.

About this Issue:

Vol. 8, No. 1
Editorial Team

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Features

Photo of blueberries falling into a prescription pill bottle in front of a blank blue background.

Health Summer 2019

The UCSF Guide to Healthy and Happy Eating

No fad diets. No superfoods. No shame.

Poison Control operators race through the city to save distraught callers

Science Summer 2019

Masters of Poison

Photo of Richard Feng, MD, in front of a mural of painted dragons, in Chinatown, San Francisco.

Human Interest Summer 2019

Mental Health on the Margins

Health

Haircuts Plus Health Care

UCSF doctors are training barbers in Oakland and San Francisco to aid in the fight against heart disease, especially among African American men.

Photo of barbers Joseph Peters, seated in a barber’s chair, and Terell Kennedy standing behind the chair, with two women standing in a barber shop.

Insights & Voices

Ask the Expert

Palliative Care: It’s About Living, Not Dying

An international expert shares how palliative care can improve the quality of life for people with serious illnesses.
Ask the Expert

How Do We Achieve Excellence?

Master diagnostician Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD, shares some tips for achieving excellence in medicine – or beyond.
Medical Mystery

The Case of the Confused Grandfather

For months, the 78-year-old had been behaving strangely. Fearing the worst, his family consulted UCSF neurologist Georges Naasan, MD.

Portrait of Kimberly Topp in front a white background.

Alumni Stories
Summer 2019

Married to UCSF and Loving It

Kimberly Topp, PhD, postdoc alum, was the first in her blue-collar family to go to college, and it did not come easily.

Books

The Orchid and the Dandelion

Is your child hardy and resilient or more sensitive and fragile? UCSF pediatrician Thomas Boyce, MD, has spent nearly 40 years studying the human stress response, especially in children. In this new book, he explores how most kids tend to be like dandelions, able to cope with stress and adversity, but a minority are like orchids, extremely sensitive to their environments. Boyce shares how – given supportive, nurturing conditions – orchid children can thrive.

Videos

Breakthrough

This documentary, about “a renegade scientist’s visionary quest to find a cure for cancer,” features immunologist James Allison, PhD, a residency alumnus and a former member of the UCSF and UC Berkeley faculties. Allison overcame many obstacles en route to his discovery of the immune system’s role in defeating cancer – work that won him a 2018 Nobel Prize. Narrated by Woody Harrelson, the film includes interviews with several current UCSF researchers, including Max Krummel, PhD, who as a graduate student in Allison’s UC Berkeley lab led several of the key studies recognized by the Nobel.

Podcasts

The Nocturnists

A cardiologist recounts a nerve-wracking emergency medical encounter in North Korea. A hospitalist shares her frustration over caring for a homeless patient who would rather be on the streets. A chief resident describes his first code blue. Created and hosted by UCSF physician and resident alumna Emily Silverman, MD, this podcast and live event series is a forum for doctors to “share stories of joy, sorrow, and self-discovery.”