Lunchtime Lecture: Utilizing Acupuncture to Maximize Fertility

Upcoming Classes in TaiChi

Upcoming Classes in Mindfulness

Treating a Cold and Flu the Holistic Way, ABC News

Coping with Stress: Staying Sane through Difficult Times

an educational film about how learning to manage stress can have profound effects on our health and wellbeing

UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
1701 Divisadero St.
Suite 150
San Francisco, CA 94115

All events are located at the Osher Center unless otherwise noted.

Spotlight: Healthy You Newsletter

"Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it."
-Marian Wright Edelman

Thanks to support from Betty and Jack Schafer to the Osher Center's Community Education and Awareness Fund, we will launch a new quarterly newsletter in January 2009. The Healthy You Newsletter will feature our latest research findings, educational advances and patient care support information to keep you well informed and empowered about your healthcare.

The newsletter will be available in print and electronic format, and will enable us to reach over 2000 people via direct circulation. We anticipate that the reach will be even greater due to distribution through other departments and centers we partner with at UCSF as well as through our national network.

We are grateful for this new opportunity to empower patients and educate health care professionals, patients and caregivers about developments in integrative medicine.

If you have areas of interest you would like us to highlight in our newsletter, please contact: Lynn Prudencio.

Special thanks to Jack and Betty Schafer.

Join us in restoring true healthcare to our community

This year the UCSF Osher Center is launching it’s $25 million Living Endowment Campaign. The Osher Center has created a special opportunity for our initial group of supporters to become members of our Health Visionary Circle. 

Health Visionary Circle members will have special access to the Center’s leadership and faculty, Osher Center Patient Navigator Service, special invitations to our Health Visionary Dinner Series events, meetings and lectures; our integrative medicine newsletter, and recognition as a Charter Member to the Living Endowment.

Roughly 70% of all illness is caused by stress. Mind-body medicine is scientifically proven to treat or prevent these illnesses with potential annual health cost savings of $700 billion.

The UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine combines the best of modern medicine with established  practices from around the world—such as acupuncture, massage and biofeedback. At the Osher Center, treatments are not an adjunct to conventional medicine; rather they
are integrated together with a focus on prevention, health maintenance, early intervention and patient-centered care.

With this approach, integrative medicine holds the power to improve the health of the public and also reduce care-related costs.

If you would like more information about the UCSF Osher Center's Living Endowment Campaign and the Health Visionary Circle, please contact Maureen Smith.

Osher Center in the Community:

Quality of Life Studies for Underserved Breast Cancer Patients

Through a competitive process, Shelley Adler, PhD, received three grants to explore quality-of-life for underserved breast cancer patients in the terminal stage. Using these finds, Dr. Adler is conducting three complementary projects:

• an examination of end-of-life beliefs and expectations among underserved Latina women with metastatic breast cancer;
• an ethnographic study of end-of-life experiences and communications as understood by underserved women with cancer, their hospice nurses, physicians, CAM practitioners, and informal caregivers; and
• an analysis of the role of an ethical will—an enduring document that expresses an individual’s values, beliefs, life lessons, love, and forgiveness in the form of a written legacy for loved ones.

This research is based on principles that include (a) the importance of addressing not only biological, but also psychological, spiritual, and sociocultural aspects of health and illness; (b) the need for a patient-centered focus in healthcare relationships; and (c) the human capacity for healing.

By using an approach derived from integrative medicine, Dr. Adler hopes her studies will provide insight into ways to enrich the end-of-life experience for patients and facilitate healing among loved ones.

Fundraising Progress

Friends of the UCSF Osher Center have an unprecedented opportunity to ensure the continued growth and enrichment of the center. Contributions to the Osher Center priorities are growing: