UC San Francisco’s Health and Human Rights Initiative (HHRI) has been named a recipient of a 2022 Immigrant Leadership Award from the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission. The awards are given each year in recognition of local immigrant leaders for their extraordinary contributions as champions of immigrant communities.
HHRI has been selected to receive the Vera Haile Champion of Justice Award, in memory of Commissioner Vera Haile. The Commission honored HHRI and six other immigrant champions and leaders at a virtual awards ceremony on June 13.
HHRI works to uphold justice and equity for immigrant, asylee, and refugee families through science, advocacy, education and training, and research. Its work includes providing services, training and education, community partnership, research, and advocacy. HHRI is led by Chair Coleen Kivlahan, MD, MSPH, and Executive Director Suzanne Barakat, MD, both affiliated with the UCSF Dept. of Family and Community Medicine.
So many of our students have migration stories of their own, and their commitment to health justice and social justice is changing American medicine.
Coleen Kilvlahan, MD, MSPH
Chair, Health & Human Rights Initiative
UCSF Dept. of Family & Community Medicine
It oversees a monthly student-run clinic that provides free forensic medical evaluations for people who have fled extreme violence or persecution in their home countries and are seeking asylum in the United States. Read more about the HHRI’s Human Rights Collaborative in this 2021 UCSF magazine article.
Every year, more than 1 million migrants attempt to enter the U.S. in search of safety. The HRC is one of dozens of student-run clinics of its kind across the country that have together supplied thousands of pro bono medical affidavits to asylum-seekers, according to the UCSF Magazine article.
“So many of our students have migration stories of their own,” Kivlahan said in the article, “and their commitment to health justice and social justice is changing American medicine.”
HHRI partners include the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics, along with members of the Trauma Recovery Center / Survivors International, UCSF School of Medicine, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and clinics, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
