Attendees of June 10 event will attempt to form record-breaking line of surfboards.

The beach of La Jolla Shores will be home to a possible record-breaking line of surfboards on June 10, as hundreds of cancer survivors, caregivers, friends and surfers gather together in solidarity in the fight to wipe out cancer. As part of UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center’s 6th annual Survivor Beach, attendees will line surfboards along the shore, nose-to-tail, from Scripps Pier down La Jolla Shores, in a stunning visual display. Last year, the line reached more than five football field lengths. Sponsored by biotechnology company Genentech, Survivor Beach is free and open to the public. The event will take place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., established Survivor Beach six years ago to bring the community together in honor of all individuals who have fought against cancer and to show support for the research that will help make more cancer patients survivors.

“Survivor Beach offers a unique and meaningful way for anyone who has been touched by cancer to gather and receive support and inspiration,” said Yingling, chair of Survivor Beach. The event precedes the Luau and Longboard Invitational in August, which will raise funds for research, patient care, and outreach and educational programs at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, the region’s only Comprehensive Cancer Center, designated by the National Cancer Center Institute.

“The line of surfboards conveys the ‘aloha spirit’ felt at both Survivor Beach and the Luau and Longboard Invitational. It is a visual reminder of the saying, ‘many hands make light work,’” Yingling continued. “Fighting cancer takes many hands: the strength of the patient, the attentiveness of the doctors and medical staff, the persistence of the researchers and the support of family, friends and the community. The line reminds us that together we are stronger than one.  Together we can fight this disease and win.”

“Survivor Beach provides a stunning visual representation of San Diego’s support in the quest for a cure for cancer,” said Scott Lippman, M.D., director of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. “Generous support from our community and corporate partners helps our physicians and scientists find ways to defeat cancer and continue to provide the most compassionate care possible to patients and families.”

In addition to the record-breaking attempt, speakers will share their inspirational stories about fighting cancer, local musician Rob Mehl will sing original, surf-inspired songs and Heali’i’s Polynesian Revue will perform authentic dances. The person or group to bring the most surfboards for the Survivor Beach line-up will receive a special prize. Participants will also have the chance to win a pair of tickets to the annual UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center Luau and Longboard Invitational, which will take place Sunday, Aug. 19.

Celebrating 19 years of surfing for a cure, the Luau and Longboard Invitational has raised more than $5 million to fund groundbreaking cancer research at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.  For more information about sponsorship opportunities, team entries and tickets for the Luau and Longboard Invitational, contact UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center at (858) 534-6797 or visit longboardluau.org.

Survivor Beach will also help kick off Moores Cancer Center’s Cancer Survivor Week 2012, which is a celebration designed to renew, recharge and rejuvenate those with experience in battling cancer. For more information on Cancer Survivor Week 2012, please visit cancer.ucsd.edu.

Survivor Beach will take place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on June 10 on the beach by Scripps Pier. To register, please visit survivorbeach.eventbrite.com.

UCLA team helps renovate convenience stores to highlight fresh produce.

Kulwant Songu and her husband, Bavinder, are the owners of YASH La Casa Market, which was renovated by a UCLA public health project to promote healthy eating in its East L.A. neighborhood.

A team of UCLA public health researchers and East Los Angeles high school students teamed up last summer to reinvent a dimly lit neighborhood snack shop into a more inviting source for healthy food.

They repainted the beige front a vibrant green while a market-transformation guru moved beer, chips and candy to the back of the East L.A. store and brought an expanded produce section to the front. Then the students noticed a fruit-laden jujube tree struggling to grow through a cramped hole in the cement-paved backyard of YASH La Casa Market.

“We have to save it!” the students said. So the group spent several sweltering days chipping out the pavement. The jujube tree is now the flourishing centerpiece of a new vegetable garden and a living symbol of transformation for the East Los Angeles neighborhood.

A trio of UCLA public health professors are working to change the food choices that East Los Angeles residents are making by renovating convenience stores to highlight fresh produce and involving the community in that transformation.

“The produce is already selling more,” said Kulwant Songu, who runs YASH with her husband. YASH is one of two stores that the UCLA team has renovated to help market healthier food to the community. A total of four stores will be done.

With new, wider windows uncluttered by posters and ads to let in more sunlight, her store has undergone a healthy makeover under the expertise of market transformation pro Nathan Cheng. The double-doored entryway — previously one door was permanently locked — is now wide open and shows off fresh paint. The cash register has been moved back to draw customers inward. Beer and chip ads are history, and less-healthy impulse items have been pushed to the back of the store. A stack of cookies remains at the checkout, but vying for attention next to them is a bowl of shiny apples.

Adjunct professor Michael Prelip heads the Corner Store Project, one of several initiatives within the UCLA-USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, which received $2 million in funding over five years from the National Institutes of Health. The project began in 2010 and focuses on East L.A. in part because obesity-related chronic diseases are so disproportionately high there, Prelip explained.

“If people want to eat better, but the food options aren’t there, it’s really hard,” said Prelip, who teaches in UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health in the Department of Community Health Sciences. “At the same time, just offering fruits and vegetables doesn’t bring customers in. Not only do we need to change the physical market, we need to change the buying market. Consumers have to want to buy fresh produce, so that’s why we’ve included a social marketing campaign.”

To change attitudes, dozens of high schoolers enrolled in social-justice electives at Roosevelt High School and Esteban Torres High School’s East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy spend time teaching the neighborhood about the importance of healthy eating and promoting the two stores that now sell more produce.

The students distributed fliers in neighborhoods about upcoming cooking demonstrations and other store-related events. They wore fruit costumes outside the shops and in neighborhood parades to pique customers’ interest. They also teamed up with a church and elementary school located across the street from YASH to attract foot traffic from churchgoers, parents, teachers and students. The youths also taught second- and third-graders about healthy eating and container gardening.

“Now, even if they don’t have a big yard at home, the kids can grow fresh herbs,” said Rosa Vander Lankin, the Corner Store Project’s program manager. “The parents are so excited that their kids are involved that they’re supporting the store to support the kids.”

The project also teamed up with several community partners to deepen community involvement. Along with high school students, the nonprofit Public Matters provided crucial assistance in creating the garden and staging cooking demonstrations. Volunteers of East Los Angeles and the community bank Pan American also participated.

“There’s just amazing community support,” Prelip said. “I’ve been doing community intervention for 25 years, and I’ve never seen a community embrace an intervention like East L.A. has.”

That embrace has also taken a nice cross-cultural turn. Songu decided to see what the largely Latino neighborhood would think of her Indian food. So she hosted an Indian cooking demo in the shop’s new Eden-like backyard garden. She even put in a small Indian grocery section in the store.

“We didn’t have that before, and our neighbors love it,” Songu said. The demand from customers was strong enough for her to expand the Indian grocery aisle. “The customers are always asking me when the next Indian cooking demonstration is going to be.”

In the garden where Songu holds her cooking demonstrations, the jujube tree is still the centerpiece, but now, it’s surrounded by sprouting blueberries, grapes, beans, chilis, cilantro, spinach, squash and other plants.

But the changes that have resulted in the two stores go beyond this. Neighbors are also visiting the stores more often because their attitudes have changed about the markets, Prelip said.

“The owners are telling us that people are buying more produce, and their relationship with their community is changing,” Prelip said. “People are really viewing these [stores] as community assets now, not just places to run in and buy some flaming-hot Cheetos. They’re enjoying elevated status for being an organization that’s trying to make the community healthier.”

Prelip’s team of researchers, including professors Deborah Glik and Alex Ortega, are collecting sales data from all the stores and will compare the four stores they’re renovating to four “control” stores. Anecdotally, storeowners of the two stores that have been transformed say they’re selling more produce and are making at least as much money as before. But researchers will soon be looking at store receipts and doing door-to-door polling of residents of more than 1,000 houses to verify whether the Corner Store Project has indeed changed food habits and attitudes.

More importantly, they’ll determine whether the results can be replicated. ”

“This was a huge risk for the store owners — modifying their businesses — and it’s great to see that after the initial buzz the community’s still excited about it,” Prelip said. “We have to make it sustainable for them. If we can make this profitable, our guess is that, not only will these stores sustain it, but other stores will start selling more fruits and vegetables, too.

“Four stores can’t create the whole change that this community needs, but they can contribute to a shift in what the community’s knowledge and attitudes are about healthy eating.”

Health Care Innovation award expected to help reduce health care spending costs.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that UCLA‘s new Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program has been awarded $3,208,540 as part of the agency’s Health Care Innovation awards program.

The awards, made by possible through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, support innovative projects nationwide aimed at saving money, delivering high-quality medical care and enhancing the health care workforce. The 26 awardees announced today are expected to help reduce health care spending costs by $254 million over the next three years.

“We can’t wait to support innovative projects that will save money and make our health care system stronger,” Sebelius said. “It’s yet another way we are supporting local communities now in their efforts to provide better care and lower cost.”

The new projects include collaborations among leading hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technology innovators, community-based organizations, patient advocacy groups and other organizations located in urban and rural areas. The Health and Human Services awards initiative allows applicants to come up with their best ideas to test how the quality and affordability of health care can be improved quickly and efficiently. The awarded projects will begin work this year to address health care issues in their local communities.

UCLA’s Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program, which launched in March, provides comprehensive care, as well as resources and support, to patients and their caregivers.

David Reuben, UCLA

“UCLA already provides outstanding geriatrics, neurology, psychiatry and primary care clinical services,” said Dr. David Reuben, chief of UCLA’s geriatrics division and leader of the program. “With the launch of this new program, we now have a comprehensive, coordinated dementia care program that spans across UCLA clinical centers and reaches into the community to meet the needs of these patients and their families. We are honored to receive this award, which will help us further our mission of caring for this ever-growing population.”

The Health Care Innovation award will allow UCLA to expand the new program to provide efficient patient- and family-centered care for approximately 1,000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia in Los Angeles County. By training and deploying professional and non-professional workers and unpaid volunteers, expanding a dementia registry, conducting patient-needs assessments, and creating individualized dementia care plans, the program will reduce and shorten hospital stays, reduce emergency room visits and improve patient health, caregiver health and quality of care, with an estimated savings of approximately $6.9 million.

Over the three-year award period, the UCLA Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program will train an estimated 2,500 workers. These workers will include nurse practitioners, who will be trained as dementia care managers; they, in turn, will help train primary care providers and patient caregivers in dementia care.

The awardees were chosen for their innovative solutions to the health care challenges facing their communities and for their focus on creating a well-trained health care workforce equipped to meet the need for new jobs in the 21st-century health system. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the health care and social assistance sector will gain the most jobs between now and 2020.

The 26 Health Care Innovation awards announced today total $122.6 million. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at HHS administers the awards through cooperative agreements.

For more information on the awards announced today, visit http://bit.ly/JnrxE4.

To learn more about the UCLA Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program, visit http://ucla.in/Kj9oXL.

UCSF workshops offer creative exchange for patients, staff.

Old-time fiddler Heidi Clare Lambert, an artist in residence at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center, conducts a workshop as part of the Hellman Visiting Artist Program.

“If I needed you, would you come to me? Would you come to me and ease my pain?”

As old-time fiddler Heidi Clare Lambert, artist in residence at UC San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center, sang these lyrics from Townes Van Zandt, her music filled a Parnassus campus conference room not the typical place to hear such sounds.

“The song is simple, but it’s just stunning,” Lambert told the doctors, scientists, patients, caregivers and members of the public attending one of her monthly bluegrass workshops, designed to spark discussion about creativity and the brain.

“At first I wasn’t really convinced a professional musician had anything to offer these incredibly talented neurologists,” Lambert said. “But they’ve pulled it out of me. They’ll ask me questions and I’ll think, ‘I’m the one who knows about this.’ The whole project has really inspired me.”

The Hellman Visiting Artist Program was created by neurologist Bruce L. Miller, M.D., director of the Memory and Aging Center, who plays his harmonica at the workshops [PDF] and often listens to music when he writes. His 200-song playlist ranges from the Doors and Jefferson Airplane to Pearl Jam and Laura Nyro.

Miller came up with the idea for the residency several years ago. He wanted to create an environment in which the neuroscience community could learn about the artists’ craft, and artists in turn, could be enriched by the interaction between UCSF staff and patients.

“This is a city of very creative people,” Miller said.”We’re really a city of artists and writers and musicians.”

Miller also wanted to create a new venue for exploring the way music and other forms of art are generated in, and impact, the brain. He’s particularly interested in these questions in terms of therapy and against the backdrop of his research on neurodegenerative diseases.

“Great data” exists on how music affects children’s development, but less is known about how it works in treating neurological injuries,” he said. Separately, he noted “that creativity thrives in the face of a subset of patients with frontotemporal dementia.”

His goal for each residency is that a piece of neuroscience research be produced, or something else concrete, such as the grand concert on Thursday, Sept. 20 that will mark the end of Lambert’s tenure. He said the next visiting artist will probably be a writer.

Music makes us feel better

He’s keenly aware of the role music plays in his own life. “Music almost brings me into a higher emotional state,” Miller said. “It evokes very positive emotions. Music releases chemicals that make us feel better and more creative. It’s sort of a cleansing process.”

From his office he can see Golden Gate Park, where the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival takes place every fall, courtesy of philanthropist Warren Hellman, who died in December but made sure it would live on. His annual $15,000 endowment also will guarantee the long-term survival of the three-year-old Hellman Visiting Artist Program at UCSF.

“Warren really knew how to connect people to make something better,” said Lambert, a close friend who played with him in October at the UCSF concert that kicked off her yearlong tenure.

In a recent workshop, titled “The Logic of Music,” she said Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You” works because it relies on repetition, is driven by melody, uses straightforward and predictable words, and is very measured. That’s how it gets embedded in our brains, Lambert said, as she urged people to sing along. And they did.

“It isn’t about your brain. It’s about your heart,” said Neal Margolis, who’d heard about the workshop two days earlier while visiting UCSF to have some memory lapses checked out. He’d brought his guitar and played with Lambert toward the end of the 90-minute session, which included the Carter Family’s “Bear Creek Blues” and Bob Dylan’s “Red River Shore.”

Lambert, who dances and teaches music, too, lives in Colorado but spends several days in the Bay Area each month. As a result of a referral from UCSF, she also visits Marin Adult Day Care Health in Novato, with a clientele that includes patients from UCSF Medical Center.

“The first time I walked in there it was hard, and shocking in some ways,” Lambert said. “A lot of vacant looks. These were very valid lives, and they know they’re not what they were. At the end of one hour, those vacant looks were nonexistent. They were engaged, they were sparkling, and some were dancing. I was so moved by how they came to me.”

The Mendocino County native witnessed a similar transformation with her longtime friend Chris Hellman (Warren’s wife), who now suffers from dementia, as was publicly noted at the farewell concert for her husband in February.

“She’ll walk into the room with a down look,” Lambert said. “When she hears the music, she’ll grow three inches and be smiling and bouncing. It changes her outlook. I suppose I’ve always known that, but to see how strongly and positively music affects human beings who are suffering has really blown my mind.”

Indre Viskontas, Ph.D., a cognitive neurologist at the Memory and Aging Center, said music can seem miraculous because it taps into parts of the brain that developed and evolved before language did, such as the limbic system, which controls emotions and memory, and the human mirror neuron system, which is involved with empathy.

“Music can directly activate these systems, bypassing language and conscious thought,” said Viskontas, a classically trained soprano who performs with opera companies and chamber music groups. “What’s really wonderful about that, in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, is that some patients are impaired in the verbal domain or have a problem in the consciousness domain. We can tap right into their empathy and emotional systems by using music and help them connect with people.”

For patients with Alzheimer’s disease, who are caught in the present and don’t have a way of keeping their memory systems focused, music from the past can help retrieve memories that would be difficult to access with words or pictures, Viskontas said.

It’s highly likely that music preceded language and is an older way of communicating, she added. “It’s really ingrained in a deep part of us,” she said.

She values the artist-in-residence program because it exposes artists and scientists to each other’s worlds in a remarkably symbiotic fashion. Viskontas taught a workshop with Lambert on the intersection between art and science in music, and is still collaborating with the musician’s predecessor, Deborah Aschheim, a visual artist who spent two years at the Memory and Aging Center.

“Neurodegenerative disorders are among the most stressful and terrible afflictions because they really do change people,” Viskontas said. “It’s a place where artists are necessary because they can provide comfort, as well as an outlet for patients and caregivers to express their emotions. They can also show a different perspective of the patients to the doctors who are trying to treat them.”

No artist works alone, of course. The Hellman Visiting Artist Program also includes a master clinician, who is Mary De May, M.D., two research scientists and a research fellow.

Community outreach program aims to boost graduation rates.

Stacy Wong and Matthew Dabit, both 18, and aspiring UC college students, participate in FRISCO Day at UCSF Mission Bay.

Heading off to college is almost always daunting, even for the most accomplished high school students. That’s why about 500 San Francisco seniors flocked to UCSF Mission Bay recently for something called FRISCO Day.

Friday Successful College Options Day, now in its second year, gives graduating students a sense of what lies ahead so that they’ll be better equipped to deal with the unknown, said Orlando Elizondo, director of the partnership between San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and UCSF.

The Mission Bay gathering, co-hosted by UCSF’s Student Academic Affairs and Community and Government Relations, was aimed at seniors who will be going to one of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. Separate non-UC events are preparing students bound for City College, San Francisco State, colleges outside California or private colleges. The shared goal is the same: Lowering the college dropout rate.

“You can get information anywhere,” said Donald Woodson, deputy director of UCSF’s Center for Educational Partnerships. “But what about when you leave your friends and your family? Things that are internal. We wanted to make sure it hit home.”

It definitely did, judging by the reaction of students during and after the five-hour session on April 13, which covered financial aid, social/family transitions and academic competency. Woodson led them through the day with energy and spirit.

Overcoming life’s obstacles

Richard Carranza, then-deputy superintendent of SFUSD, described the obstacles he had faced in college. And a small group from UC Berkeley’s Student Life Advising Services spoke of potential hurdles in a way that struck a chord.

“It’s not real until you hear from someone who’s gone through it,” said Balboa High senior Jasmine Minato, who is a mix of Filipino, African American, Swedish and Japanese and worries about encountering culture shock at UC San Diego. “We were all so empowered by Ruben’s story.”

She was referring to Ruben Canedo, who will graduate from Cal with degrees in social welfare and ethnic studies and three job offers. Entertaining and charismatic, he had the room alternately laughing and close to tears as he talked about a life of ups and downs.

Canedo was born in Mexico and later moved to Calexico, a border town. His mother was an undocumented immigrant and he went to a terrible high school. His tuition was covered but he worked four jobs his first year at Cal to help out his family — which had a household income of $13,000 a year — and barely slept. As a result, he flunked every course his first two semesters.

“That’s because I lost myself,” Canedo said. “… But all those struggles and challenges, were nothing compared to everything my ancestors had to go through way back when.”

Speakers make it clear that students will have to deal with all kinds of things: Navigating a financial aid thicket that includes grants, work/study, loans and scholarships; doing laundry, managing a budget, living with strangers and learning the difference between needs and wants; feeling like an impostor who doesn’t deserve to be at UC; and coping with much larger schools and an unprecedented level of academic rigor.

“I felt like I didn’t need anybody. After three months, you realize, ‘Wait a minute, maybe this isn’t as easy as I thought.’ I decided to turn off my hard-headed stubbornness,” said Jeanette Corona, a second-year Cal student who urged the seniors to seek out counselors and take advantage of the vast array of services UC offers.

Carranza — who was named San Francisco schools superintendent on April 24 — told the seniors that he, like many of them, was the first in his family to go to college. He’d ask himself why he was studying when friends who didn’t advance beyond high school were making lots of money in the Tucson mining industry, which collapsed during his sophomore year at the University of Arizona.

And suddenly, his pals’ new cars and trucks were parked on street corners with “for sale” signs. They lost their apartments and had to move back home with their parents. They were selling their fancy electronics gear.

“And I had a job. Better yet, I had a career, something I loved to do,” said Carranza, who noted that the difference between a high school and college degree is worth $1 million over the course of one’s work life.

Afterward, Alex Yu, a Burton High senior accepted at UC Santa Cruz and on the wait list at UC Davis, said being an intern at UCSF’s Science & Health Education Partnership (SEP) program last summer made him more confident about completing assignments and working with people, especially older ones. Still, he has concerns.

“I live with my mom and grandfather, and I’m an only child,” Yu said. “I’m family-oriented and I worry about the impact it will have on them when I’m gone.”

Collaboration brings together UCSF, other partners to link research with practice to improve health.

Kevin Grumbach, UC San Francisco

In March, a committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report, Primary Care and Public Health: Exploring Integration to Improve Population Health, that includes a case study of the San Francisco Health Improvement Partnerships (SF HIP), a public health and primary care integration in San Francisco.

“This report highlights the need for public health departments and primary care clinicians to work together more closely,” said Kevin Grumbach, M.D., co-director of the Community Engagement and Health Policy (CE&HP) program of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). CE&HP serves as the administrative core of SF HIP, and is supporting the effort through planning and implementation phases.

For example, public health campaigns to encourage people to consume less sweetened beverages or not smoke work best when these messages are reinforced by doctors and nurses caring for individual patients, Grumbach says. The report also pointed out that the research assets of academic health centers have a valuable role to play in the integration of public health and primary care by helping to ensure that these efforts are guided by scientific evidence and are systematically evaluated.

“We need to move out of our traditional silos and bring people together across disciplines and sectors if we are to make greater progress in improving the health of our communities and eliminating disparities,” Grumbach said. “I am proud of how SF HIP has brought together such diverse partners—from UCSF, community-based organizations and the SF Department of Public Health to the SF Unified School District and private medical groups—to harness our collective assets and tackle the most pressing public health problems in San Francisco.”

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UC Berkeley senior uses face paint to help raise donations for her Walk to End MS fund.

UC Berkeley senior Chrystal Redekopp uses face paint to help get donations for her Walk to End MS Fund.

Chrystal Redekopp has transformed herself into a giraffe, a gorilla, a hippo, a pikachu, a baboon and a capybara — all for a good cause.

Using face paints collected for Halloween costumes over the years, the UC Berkeley senior will put on the face of any animal requested by donors to her Walk to End MS fund. And then she’ll post a photo of her face on her Facebook page.

It’s Redekopp’s way of rewarding people who support her participation in the annual charity benefit, which aims to raise $1.4 million this year to fight multiple sclerosis. This year’s East Bay walk takes place Saturday at Oakland’s Lake Merritt.

The walk is an every-year event for Redekopp, a Billings, Mont., native who lost her mother to the debilitating disease two weeks before she started college in Nevada. She lasted a semester. Eight years later, she came to Berkeley as a re-entry student and is about to graduate with a major in sociology and a minor in education.

“The main reason I do the walk is for her memory and to help people who are in the same situation I was,” says Redekopp, “because no one should have to go through that.”

Redekopp’s face painting skills go way back. She always loved costumes as a kid, and Halloween was her favorite holiday. When she was 10 or 11, she’d take a card table with her when the family went to high school football games and set herself up as a face painter, charging 25 cents per cheek or $1 for a full face job.

Her Facebook photos show some of Redekopp’s more recent, and very elaborate, Halloween transformations — Ziggy Stardust, Wonder Woman and a Roy Lichtenstein portrait, complete with word bubble.

But this is the first year she’s meshed her face painting with the MS fundraiser.

“I was thinking about how boring and annoying it must be for people to get emails and Facebook posts saying, ‘Donate to my cause,’ “ she recounts. “I thought it would be fun for people if there was an incentive, and if I had to just do a little work.”

Her first idea was to do impressions of animals, but then people started asking for unusual ones. So she decided to paint her face instead and photograph the results.

“I thought it would be fun,” she says.

Her first request was for a giraffe. As soon as the photo went up on Facebook last Friday (April 13), she says, donations started pouring in. Since then she’s raised her original fundraising goal of $500 to $1,600.

“It’s pretty labor intensive,” she admits. The capybara took her six hours; the gorilla three.

Photos of her first six animals are displayed with this article and on Redekopp’s Walk for MS Facebook event page, titled Animal Crackers, and on her own page, where she’ll be posting upcoming Chrystal-as-animal photos. Already waiting are requests for a zebra, honey badger, bear, cheetah, zorse, chicken or pug and koala.

She’s recruited a team of eight friends to walk with her, including others from Berkeley, and they’ve raised more than $4,000 so far.

Donations to Redekopp’s Walk for MS can be made through her page on the National MS Society website, where she tells her story.  More information about the East Bay walk can be found on this webpage, also on the national site.

Dollars donated by California tax filers support innovative research to fight breast cancer, tobacco-related diseases.

Research can be slow and purposely deliberate. Investigating cancer can take many years to gather data, prove hypotheses, develop treatments and find cures.

But while many scientists tackle that important work, UC-run programs — funded by donations from California taxpayers — are making sure that cancer research involves and informs the community, especially groups vulnerable to a hard-hitting disease that won’t quickly go away.

Yearly contributions from tax filers — many in modest dollar amounts — benefit the UC-administered Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) and the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP).

Line 413 for tobacco-related cancer awareness, prevention

Last year, more than 31,000 people checked line 413 at the end of their state income tax forms and donated an average of nearly $14 to the California Cancer Research Fund. Those contributions now fund a statewide project to deliver culturally-sensitive cancer awareness and prevention information to groups that are constantly bombarded by tobacco industry marketing. The project was conceived and is administered by UC’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program.

“Many people are still shocked to hear that tobacco-related illnesses and cancer are the No.1 killer of African Americans,” said Carol McGruder, who is co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC), a researcher and San Francisco activist fighting the pervasive effects of tobacco in the community.

She notes that while smoking in California has plummeted to under 12 percent — the second lowest rate in the nation only to Utah — the rate among African Americans may be as high as 30 percent, according to some community-based studies. McGruder also points out that billboards for tobacco products are placed in African American communities at a rate four to five times greater than in white neighborhoods, and products such as menthol cigarettes are targeted specifically at African Americans, especially young people.

McGruder is part of a collaborative project, Alliance for Data dissemination to achieve Equity for Priority Populations on Tobacco (ADEPT). ADEPT is one of many projects funded by the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, which administers a variety of innovative research grants in biomedical science, addiction, policy, regulatory and environmental science and health disparities in California, ADEPT is funded exclusively and solely from the cancer research fund from taxpayers’ line 413 contributions.

The LGBT community is another that suffers from high rates of smoking — more than double the general population, and lesbians smoke at a rate triple of that of all women, according to studies. “Tobacco is one of the leading preventable causes of death among LGBTs, if not the leading cause,” said Naphtali Offen, a UCSF research associate and co-founder of the Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health (CLASH), an ADEPT partner.

Offen’s research at UCSF has documented how the tobacco industry has targeted LGBTs since the early 1990s with ads in gay media glamorizing smoking and sponsorship of events, especially those that provided AIDS and health-related services to the community. CLASH has worked to undo ties between the tobacco industry and LGBT community leaders and event organizers. And now that it is part of the tax-funded collaborative, it will expand its efforts as one of California’s leading resources for smoking cessation support, provider training and multifaceted education around LGBT tobacco use.

Other community partners in ADEPT will address tobacco-related health disparities including cancer disparities and reach out to American Indian/Alaskan natives, Asian Americans, native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, Hispanics and Latinos and low socioeconomic status populations.

While each partner will develop culture-specific programs and materials aimed at their groups, all will learn from each other about effective means of delivering cancer and health awareness information, whether its via social media, ads in ethnic newspapers or neighborhood forums, said Rod Lew, principal investigator for ADEPT and executive director of the Asian Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership.

A key part of the effort will be training community and tobacco control leaders throughout the state to disseminate key health and research information to these various populations, said Lew.

Line 405 for breast cancer

Donations from line 405 of the state tax forms have funded nearly $10 million in research grants aimed at identifying environmental factors that may cause breast cancer, developing therapies to block the cancer from spreading, exploring natural products that may thwart the disease, and improving support networks to help patients and families navigate a sometimes daunting health care system.

CBCRP is renowned not only for its innovative research, but also for engaging community organizations in its studies. One project funded by 405 tax check-off contributions teamed researchers and the Asian Health Services in Oakland to look at breast cancer risks in nail salon workers, mostly Vietnamese women, who are overly exposed to chemicals in the polish and products that they breathe and touch. (See above video).

“I’m impressed by CBCRP’s research strategy  that requires a balanced partnership between researchers and community representatives so that the community can see the direct benefits of the research sooner than later,” said Thu Quach, a scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and a leader in the study of nail salon workers.

Research guides policymakers, too

Advocates and researchers in the ADEPT collaborative extend their education efforts beyond their communities. The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, for example, has been urging the FDA to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes. The group has presented research to the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee showing that as many as 80 percent of African American smokers use menthol cigarettes and those cigarettes tend to hook youth into the unhealthy habit.

Other ADEPT groups have targeted cigarillos, little cigars whose popularity and sales have increased in recent years. The product is not regulated by the FDA and not subject to the same taxes as cigarettes.

On the breast cancer side, research results of the check-off-funded nail salon worker study have helped inform public policy, said Quach. This includes reintroduction of the Federal Safe Cosmetic Act of 2011 to ban toxic compounds, require premarket safety testing and provide greater regulatory authority to the FDA to oversee cosmetic manufacturers.

Some CBCRP and state tax check-off studies are designed specifically to inform policymakers. Joy Melnikow, a family and community medicine professor and director of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at UC Davis, received a grant last year to analyze a tool that policymakers and others can use to consider impacts of various options on future health program benefits and costs. Such a tool — a user-friendly computer interface — is important as breast cancer screening and health programs for underserved women in California are faced with increasing need for services and shrinking budgets.

“While this project is specific to a breast cancer screening program for underserved women in California, if it is successful, a similar approach could be used for other breast cancer screening programs and policy decisions,” said Melnikow. “We hope that policy decisions informed by evidence will lead to better outcomes for women.

“The California Breast Cancer Research Program, funded through tax check-off contributions, supports our project and other research, all of which have as their ultimate goal better care and outcomes for women with breast cancer,” she said.

Second grant will let UC Irvine’s Health Education Center expand DUI awareness program.

California reported the largest decline in drunk-driving deaths of any state in the nation in 2010, according to recent statistics, and a $232,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety – through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – to UC Irvine’s Health Education Center is helping to keep the trend on track.

In partnership with the center’s RADD College DUI Awareness Program, UCI has organized nine universities into a consortium over the last two years to prevent and promote alternatives to drinking and driving. The new funding will allow UCI to add four more campuses to the effort this year.

At a recent student health event on Ring Mall, Satenik Melkumyan, a second-year biology major, said the program reminds students to be responsible for each other.

“When I was in high school, I knew someone who was in a car accident the night of senior prom because of drinking,” she said. “It could have been prevented if friends had just gotten more involved.”

First-year criminology major Chryssy Miranda noted that with spring break coming up, the RADD message is especially relevant. “It’s OK to have fun,” she said, “but let someone else drive you home.”

Doug Everhart, interim director and alcohol programs manager at UCI’s Health Education Center, says students are receptive to the RADD College DUI Awareness Program because it doesn’t tell them what not to do.

“Instead, we point out what they can do,” he says. “If they’re going out and choose to drink, they need to assign a designated driver, take a taxi, walk to the event, or have some other plan for getting there and back safely.”

The ideas are not a particularly hard sell at UCI. Nearly half the students don’t drink alcohol at all, surveys have found, and only a small percentage participate in high-risk behaviors. “We have a respectful culture here that’s receptive to these positive alternatives, which helps us maintain a safe campus community,” Everhart notes.

With its initial grant of $451,000 from the state Office of Traffic Safety – via the NHTSA – UCI engaged UC Davis, Cal State Sacramento, USC, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego State, UC San Diego, the University of San Diego and Cal State San Marcos in the program.

“We saw the San Diego region as a model,” says Kristin Mendoza, grants project coordinator at UCI’s Health Education Center, “because it had representation from a UC, the Cal State system and a private university. So this year we’re looking to replicate that by adding the University of the Pacific in the Sacramento area and UCLA and Cal State Northridge in the Los Angeles region.”

The private university in Orange County is still to be determined, and plans are in the works to expand the consortium to the Bay Area and Inland Empire in coming years.

The RADD College DUI Awareness Program uses a variety of tactics to get its message across. At UCI, the crew appears at campus events such as Shocktoberfest, Reggaefest and Wayzgoose and speaks to Greek leaders and athletic teams. Toyota Motorsales U.S.A., Inc. donated a graphics-wrapped 2012 Scion xB to RADD to help spread the word at UCI and other participating campuses.

The entertainment industry’s voice for road safety, RADD encourages bars and restaurants to provide free nonalcoholic drinks, appetizers and other incentives to designated drivers carrying a RADD card.

Recently, RADD’s efforts were lauded in an NHTSA report showing that drunk-driving deaths in California had declined from 950 in 2009 to a record low of 791 in 2010.

UCSF and SF General are both major training grounds for doctors who specialize in HIV/AIDS, and numerous research collaborations exist across the Bay Bridge.

At two of the largest hospitals near downtown Oakland, doctors have heard the same story so many times from young African-American men undergoing treatment for HIV/AIDS that they practically know it by heart.

They felt ostracized during their teen years. They first explored their sexual identities in secret. Their earliest encounters were covert trysts. But after a while, they found what they thought to be true love and acceptance in the arms of a much older man—whom they later discovered exposed them to HIV.

All these stories point to one thing, said Kathleen Clanon, M.D., ACMC, an attending physician and the former chief of HIV services at Highland Hospital, part of the county medical center and one of the main facilities treating people with HIV/AIDS in Oakland. If the medical community is to effectively confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Oakland, she said, it needs to connect with communities like the one these young men belong to: a loose-knit, insular, hidden and particularly vulnerable group made up of individuals who may not know they are at high risk and may not be receiving the information they need to protect themselves.

“If we could really reach out to them effectively, we wouldn’t see new cases in Alameda County,” Clanon said.

The epidemic across the bay

In the Bay Area and the United States as a whole, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to spread, particularly in urban areas and within certain populations such as young African-American men.

With changes and cutbacks in health care funding looming, Oakland doctors are concerned they may not be able to adequately address their community’s needs.

For decades, the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) have led the medical establishment worldwide in patient care, professional training and research related to HIV/AIDS. Along with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the greater medical community in the city, UCSF has helped set the standard for care for this disease since the earliest days of the epidemic. UCSF and SFGH are both places where people with HIV/AIDS get some of the best care in the world.

[Related: In focus: HIV/AIDS in 2012, Trauma drives HIV epidemic in women, Video depicts women with HIV]

Just 10 miles away, across the Bay Bridge in Oakland, patients also receive excellent care – assuming they are diagnosed and linked to care. Many of them are not.

Doctors in Oakland describe a smoldering epidemic, growing larger every year, that is in some ways more hidden than the epidemic in San Francisco. Providing world-class care to patients there is only one part of the challenge. Finding people at high risk, getting them tested, helping them avoid the virus or linking them to care if they are already infected are also huge issues that contribute to the overall nature of AIDS in Oakland.

The city of Oakland is part of Alameda County, where an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 or more people live with HIV/AIDS, said Damon Francis, M.D., of the East Bay AIDS Center, one of the county’s major providers for people with HIV/AIDS. Francis was a chief resident at SFGH before doing a one-year fellowship at the East Bay AIDS Center and has been compiling statistics on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the East Bay.

His statistics show that the epidemic in Oakland closely follows national trends, with more infections appearing among women, people of color, and young people. Other urban centers in California face very different epidemics. San Francisco has a much larger gay population affected by the disease and Los Angeles has many more Latinos.

That only includes those diagnosed and counted. Francis adds that the lack of a centralized approach, added to the covert nature of homosexuality among some urban African-American men, makes it particularly difficult to know how many undiagnosed infections exist in Alameda County, which includes Oakland. “We know we’re undercounting, and we know the epidemic is getting worse,” he said.

Clanon estimates the actual number is closer to 9,000 people, with about 5,000 -6,000 in care at Highland Hospital, the East Bay AIDS Clinic Kaiser Permanente sites,  and at smaller clinics and private practices scattered across the county. The city and county of San Francisco, by comparison, has more than 15,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in a population about half the size of Alameda County.

Identifying the people who are not yet diagnosed is one of the keys to turning the tables on the epidemic. Yet, when these people are hard to identify, it is also one of the core challenges, especially when it comes to young men having sex with other men.

Traditional HIV prevention messages revolve around safe sex and are usually spread via health care providers. But healthy young men may not see themselves in need of health care unless they break a leg or have some other acute injury. As such, they may not access the system and are not likely to encounter traditional prevention messages in their daily lives.

Doctors in Oakland worry that their inability to reach such at-risk populations before they are exposed to the virus keeps the epidemic moving upward.

“We worry that not only do we not have the right preventive messages but we’re not giving them in the right places either,” said Jeff Burack, co-medical director of the East Bay AIDS Center.

According to Howard Edelstein, M.D., a doctor at the Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland who also specializes in HIV/AIDS care, somewhere between a third to half of the patients they see already have advanced AIDS when they come in for the first time. This makes their treatment more complicated because people with advanced AIDS are generally sicker and may have more co-infections and other complications.

Finding money for new prevention efforts is complicated by limited funds already split among organizations that represent the various affected populations.

HIV/AIDS funding: The question of Ryan White and Medi-Cal

The impending crisis over funding for HIV/AIDS in general creates a sense of urgency. Like many parts of the country, Oakland may be facing thinning resources just as its patient pool expands. For now, though, a major amount of financial support pours into the city from federal and state programs that help to pay for antiretroviral drugs and other services for people with HIV/AIDS.

The federal Ryan White Care Act alone provides about $7 million a year for the care of low-income people with the disease in Oakland, Clanon said. That money pays for doctors, social workers, nurses, support staff and numerous clinic programs. But most of all, it pays for drugs. The law enables people to begin taking drugs right away, often the same day they are diagnosed and even before they can document their income and residency requirements.

“It has been the cornerstone of care for poor people with HIV,” Clanon said. She estimates that two-thirds of the 1,200 patients undergoing treatment for HIV/AIDS at the county hospital are supported by this federal funding mechanism.

At the East Bay AIDS Center, which currently sees about 1,400 patients, Ryan White funding is the sole source of support for nearly 200 patients, including most of the 110 HIV-positive youth in care (ages 15-24).

Nationally, the Ryan White Act provides about $2 billion a year to hospitals and clinics across the United States. It is unclear what will happen to this funding after 2013, when the current authorization is due to expire. When this expiration loomed in the past, the Congress reauthorized the funding.  But in the current political and economic climate, no one is counting on that.

“The smart money, at the moment, is that it will either be greatly changed or will go away in 2013,” Clanon said.

Meanwhile, the patient population in Oakland continues to grow. In addition to the large caseload of existing patients, doctors at the East Bay AIDS Center added three or four additional patients per week last year. The county hospital is also adding hundreds of new cases annually.

Many of the patients in Oakland rely on state Medi-Cal funds, a health insurance program for low-income Californians that also faces an uncertain future. State cutbacks to Medi-Cal already have made it difficult for some patients to find specialized treatment because fewer and fewer doctors are accepting the public insurance.

“Try to find a urologist in the East Bay who takes Medi-Cal — there aren’t any,” Edelstein said. “Try to find an orthopedist who takes Medi-Cal – again, zero.”

A shared separation

Many of the people with HIV/AIDS in San Francisco are in the same situation as people in Oakland with respect to federal Ryan White funding and state Medi-Cal issues. Many also face the same complicating societal issues — homelessness, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, drug addiction and so on.

“It is very heavily an epidemic of the disenfranchised,” Francis said.

In part because of such similarities, medical collaborations and other exchanges long have occurred on both sides of the Bay. UCSF and SFGH are both major training grounds for doctors who specialize in HIV/AIDS, and numerous research collaborations exist across the Bay Bridge as well.

Edelstein has participated in collaborations with UCSF researchers on a number of studies, including an ongoing trial called Intervention for those Recently Informed of Seropositive Status (IRISS), which looks at the effect of early psychiatric interventions for people with HIV and depression, a common reason why people with HIV/AIDS fail to adhere to their drug regimens.

Still, even if there is a strong sense of shared mission among doctors in San Francisco and in Oakland, differences remain. “We really don’t have anything close to what San Francisco has in terms of money and manpower to address HIV,” Francis said.

Clanon summed up the difference with a statement attributed to the Mexican politician Porfirio Diaz. President of Mexico for 40 years beginning in the 1870s, Diaz allegedly described his country using the phrase, “So far from God, so close to the United States.”

“That’s how I feel,” Clanon said.

March 31 event marks 15 years of healing San Diego’s underserved.

On Saturday, March 31, the UC San Diego Student-Run Free Clinic Project will host its annual fundraiser and awards ceremony. The event will be held at the UC San Diego Price Center Ballroom on the La Jolla campus. Funds raised during this event help provide free medical, dental, pharmacy, acupuncture, legal and social services  to San Diego’s working poor and homeless. More than 2,000 San Diegans rely on its comprehensive integrative health services every year.

Ellen Beck, UC San Diego

“For more than 15 years, the UC San Diego Student-Run Free Clinic Project has helped people of all ages and backgrounds access high-quality health care, regardless of their ability to pay,” said Ellen Beck, M.D., clinical professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “The patients we assist have fallen through the gaps in San Diego’s ragged safety net and cannot afford health insurance.”

The Student-Run Free Clinic Project is run by 200 UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences students under the supervision of 100 licensed professionals including physicians, pharmacists, dentists, lawyers and social workers. The project has four clinical sites throughout the region: Baker Elementary in Southeast San Diego, First Lutheran Church Downtown, Pacific Beach United Methodist Church, and Golden Avenue Elementary in Lemon Grove.

“Since our launch in 1997, we have had the support of incredible community partners, a passionate group of students and the blessing of the UC San Diego School of Medicine,” said Beck. “On our first night, in the basement of a church, we saw 10 patients. The number has grown and grown.”

Since its inception, more than 35,000 clinic visits have taken place offering transdisciplinary health care services, including specialty care for cardiovascular, ophthalmologic and psychiatric needs. Prescriptions, lab work, and related services are available at no charge. More than 85 percent of the patients have chronic conditions in need of ongoing care.

[Related: UC Health's community benefit tops $3B; video: UC San Diego Student-Run Free Clinic Golden Avenue Elementary; video: UC San Diego Student-Run Free Clinic Baker Elementary]

“It is important to point out that this is underserved medicine, not charity care,” said Beck. “For example, our dental services are not poverty dentistry where teeth are pulled, but restorative. We believe that toothlessness leads to joblessness, so we provide solutions like dentures that take care of the medical need and improve a person’s employment opportunities.”

The Student-Run Free Clinic Project serves as a model of care for other U.S. cities. The program runs an onsite Fellowship in Underserved Health Care, the first in the country. More than 140 faculty and health professionals have completed the national training and started more than 15 other student-run free clinic projects across the country.

“The medical students are taught a humanistic approach to care,” said Beck. “This is a mindset that they use every day and we hope will carry into their future medical practices. We teach them how to preserve their passion and sense of respect for all patients. All you have to do is see the students in action to know that they are exceptional in their approach.”

Beck said that the greatest challenge for the Student-Run Free Clinic Project is that operational expenses have increased while previously  available funding from federal and state sources have decreased. Beck estimates that the clinic provides the community an equivalent of $1.6 million in free medications, and several million in donated services.

“Many of the families who come to us are in crisis or on the verge of homelessness. Some are simply struggling financially and need help with basic health needs. We are here to serve all, but need the support of the community to do so.”

Beck is a recipient of the 2010 James Irvine Foundation Leadership award. She was recently honored as a WebMD Magazine 2011 Health Hero.

For more information on the fundraising dinner and award celebration on March 31, please call (858) 534-6160 or visit http://meded.ucsd.edu/freeclinic/benefit_dinner.php.

Impact includes caring for uninsured patients, training professionals and conducting research.

For the first time, University of California Health has measured the collective impact it has in caring for uninsured patients, educating tomorrow’s health leaders and advancing science to tackle medicine’s toughest challenges.

The estimated community benefit of UC Health’s five medical centers totaled $3.3 billion last year.

“As a public university and cornerstone of the safety net, UC Health is committed to serve California’s health needs,” said Dr. John Stobo, UC senior vice president for health sciences and services.” Our combined community benefit demonstrates the powerful impact UC Health has as a system.”

Throughout UC Health, student-run clinics collaborate across their campuses and within their communities to treat patients from the working poor to the homeless and their pets. UC’s three nurse-run clinics provide compassionate care to underserved patients in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco. UC’s innovative Programs in Medical Education (PRIME) train doctors where they are most needed with programs focused on rural health and telemedicine (UC Davis), the Latino community (UC Irvine), the diverse disadvantaged (UCLA, UC Riverside), the San Joaquin Valley (UC Merced, UC Davis, UCSF), health equity (UC San Diego), and the urban underserved (UCSF, UC Berkeley).

UC Health has the nation’s largest health sciences educational system, with 18 professional schools and programs on seven campuses. Its community impact is felt in all corners of the state, through telemedicine services, clinical trials, classroom collaborations and affiliations such as UCLA’s partnership with the Venice Family Clinic, the nation’s largest free clinic.

Community benefits include programs or activities that improve access to care, enhance community health, advance medical knowledge and reduce the burden of government or other community efforts.

Here is a breakdown of UC Health’s community benefit in fiscal 2011, with totals from the health sciences campuses that have medical centers – UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UCSF:

-Charity care and unreimbursed care: $560.7 million
Free medical services for patients who had no source of payment for urgently needed care and the unpaid cost of Medicare, Medi-Cal, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, indigent care programs and other safety net programs.

-Education: $174.7 million
Health professions education encompasses teaching physicians, nurses and students as well as scholarships and funding for education.

-Donations/sponsorships: $1.8 million
Through financial and in-kind contributions, UC Health offers support to community organizations to improve community health.

-Research: $2.6 billion
UC research gives local residents access to the latest treatments and therapies for advanced illness and complex health conditions.

For more information, view UC Health’s community impact brochure.

Related links:

• UC Davis community benefit report
• UC San Diego community benefit fact sheet
• UCSF: committed to the city