Sylvie Sturm

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

[Originally published in Synapse on May 23, 2013.] 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).

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.

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.] I’m writing in response to the Matier and Ross column in the Chronicle, “Center for Gender Equity makes some more equal than others.”

I’m albino. My eyes are … different. In many ways, the world is not built for me. Every time I open Outlook on my iPhone and FaceID pops up, I have to pull the phone far away from its usual position — an inch and a half from my face — because the LIDAR sensors on the front that identify me were not designed to work at a distance that makes sense for my eyes.

[Originally authored by Dr. Philip R. Lee — a UCSF professor of social medicine and director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies — and published in Synapse on April 24, 1986.] Twenty years ago, states throughout the country began to implement federal legislation (Title XIX, Social Security Act) establishing a national program for medical care for the poor (Medicaid). In the same year, 1966, the federal Medicare program began providing hospital and medical insurance for the elderly.

Elections for the Graduate & Professional Student Association (GPSA) happen from April 15-29. However, at the start of writing this article, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what the GPSA is or does and I’m willing to bet you don’t either.

In 2020, COVID-19 took millions of lives and has taken many more since. Every individual around the world felt the impact of the vicious virus, and everyday life as we knew it was suspended.

[Originally published in Synapse on March 20, 1974.] Wilma Scott Heide, the first nurse to be elected national president of the National Organization of Women (NOW) told a large and responsive audience at UCSF Monday night that “mass consciousness-raising is needed in nursing.”

I have never taken a class about the polycrisis, and in fact only recently learned what it is. The polycrisis is what we are living through, the climate crisis and related issues such as war, mass migration, populism, and vast social inequities.