Category Archives: Oral History

The UCSF Diversity and Health Equity in Health Sciences Education (DHEHS) Oral History Project

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In 2023, the UCSF Archives & Special Collections is embarking on an ambitious oral history project that seeks to elevate the narratives, perspectives, and expertise of historically underrepresented populations in the education and research communities at UCSF. Through engagement with DEIA leaders from each of the four schools (Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy), we will record their experiences and document efforts to address and remediate inequities in health, health care, and health sciences education. Taking a profile approach, the goals for each interview will be informed by that person’s life history and experiences. At the conclusion of this one-year project we will organize a public event to introduce this new research corpus to the UCSF community.

Oral history is one of the many tools Archives & Special Collections uses to document different facets of UCSF’s history. One especially important project, the “Diversity in US Medical Schools” series, focused on policies pursued by UCSF and Stanford University medical schools to increase racial and ethnic diversity from the 1960s to the 2000s. This collection contains interviews with Julius R. Krevans, Philip R. Lee, John A. Watson, John S. Wellington, and others, and documents an important chapter in the university’s work to increase the diversity of medical students at the university. Oral history is a valuable tool because it allows us to document personal stories and remembrances often missed in paper records. As in efforts like the “Diversity in US Medical Schools” series, the DHEHS Oral History Project seeks to understand not just what, for example, DEIA initiatives UCSF has pursued, but why those who led these efforts chose a particular path and how their previous experiences influenced their thinking. Further, we can ask interviewees to reflect on these efforts from the present day and consider the long term impact of their work, including what was successful, and how they might have done things differently.

A selection of title pages from the “Diversity in US Medical Schools” oral history series, one of Archives and Special Collections’ many important oral history collections.

The first phase of the DHEHS Oral History Project includes forming advisory committees at each of the four schools. The advisory committees’ primary purpose is to develop and prioritize a list of interviewees from their respective schools. Projects of all types benefit from advisory committees, and oral history projects are no different. Especially for projects documenting institutional history, oral history practitioners can come in with little prior knowledge, and must learn as much and they can as quickly as possible. Advisory committees are an ideal group to provide institutional knowledge and expertise efficiently and strategically. For the DHEHS Oral History Project, with support from deans and administrators at all four schools, we’re fortunate to have all the advisory committees established, and all are in various stages of identifying potential interviewees and prioritizing who should be interviewed for this project. Interviewing should commence in the next quarter, and we look forward to hearing the personal experiences of those doing essential work around DEIA and health equity at UCSF.

Welcome Allison Tracy-Taylor, Oral History Archivist

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We are excited to introduce Allison Tracy-Taylor who joins UCSF Archives & Special Collections as an Oral History Archivist. Allison will be leading the Oral History Program (OHP) supported by the Academic Senate Chancellor’s Fund and Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication that will enable the university to record and preserve diverse voices of the UCSF faculty sharing their stories in their own words and better shape the legacy they leave behind.

 This program aims to better understand and share the history of the health sciences education through recording, transcribing, and preserving oral histories with members of the UCSF teaching and research community and by making these oral histories available to the public. Through engagement with DEI leaders, the project will record their experiences and document efforts to address and remediate inequities in health, health care, and education. The Oral History Program will elevate the narratives, perspectives, and expertise of historically underrepresented populations in the education and research communities at UCSF. This one-of-a-kind public record will address “silences” and gaps in the existing historical narrative. Allison will collaborate with faculty to convene Oral History Advisory Committees at each of the schools to identify and develop the list of interviewees and perform outreach activities related to the program.

Allison Tracy-Taylor, Oral History Archivist
Allison Tracy-Taylor

Collecting and preserving archival material that documents nuanced historical narratives and encourages contemporary conversations has been a major theme of Allison’s work. Most recently as an independent oral historian based in Sacramento, CA, Allison was the project lead for the California State Library website Voices of the Golden State, a curated collection of oral histories exploring many facets of California’s history. She also worked on multiple oral history projects, including a project on the history of the medical device technology industry in Silicon Valley for Stanford BioDesign, and the Documenting the Experiences of Mexican, Filipina, and Chicana Women in California Agriculture Oral History Project for the Center for Oral and Public History at Cal State Fullerton.  

Allison is passionate about supporting oral history practitioners and growing the field into an inclusive, equitable space. She served as the 2019-2020 President of the Oral History Association (OHA), as well as on the OHA’s Council for several years. While president she initiated the development of the OHA’s Guidelines for Social Justice Oral History Work, convened and served on the Independent Practitioners’ Task Force, which developed a robust toolkit for independent oral historians, and chaired a task force that developed remote interviewing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Community engagement and education have also been central to Allison’s work. Prior to going independent, Allison worked as the Oral History Administrator at the Kentucky Historical Society, overseeing the Kentucky Oral History Commission (KOHC), the only commission of its kind in the United States. She provided outreach, education, and technical support to oral history practitioners and programs throughout Kentucky. Allison was also the Oral Historian for the Stanford Historical Society, documenting Stanford University’s history through the stories of faculty and staff and serving as the program’s senior oral history mentor. 

Allison began her work in oral history at the University of Nevada Oral History Program (UNOHP), serving in multiple roles, including as an interviewer for a multi-year project on the history of women’s athletics at the University of Nevada, and an editor for the resulting book We Were All Athletes: Title IX and Women’s Athletics at the University of Nevada. In addition to an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University, Allison holds a B.A. in Sociology and English Literature from the University of Nevada. 

In her free time, Allison enjoys hiking, reading, the distinct hobbies of collecting craft supplies and crafting, and baking. Though she will always be a Nevadan at heart, she has come to love the profound beauty of California. 

#ColorOurCollections Coloring Book

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Once again we contributed to the New York Academy of Medicine’s #ColorOurCollections. We’ve created a coloring book featuring images from our collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Please download the book, color, and tweet your creations @ucsf_archives using #ColorOurCollections.

Download the complete UCSF Archives 2022 Coloring Book here.

You can view other coloring books from participating institutions here. Happy coloring!

Celebrating Black faculty at UCSF, past and present

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By Erin Hurley, User Services and Accessioning Archivist

We are currently more than halfway through Black History Month, a month that takes on special significance this year, following a summer of protests asserting, yet again, that Black Lives Matter. Archives & Special Collections would be remiss if we failed to mention the groundbreaking Black faculty at UCSF, both past and present, who have made significant contributions to the fields of medicine and psychology (as well as many others), and, who, in their work, have found ways to illuminate new facets of racism previously unconsidered and who, on their paths to success, have also sought to support and lift up others.

Mindy Thompson Fullilove is a social psychiatrist who served as Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) from 1983 until 1990. Her work sits at the intersection of mental health and public health, and she focuses, in her own description, on the “sources and consequences of inequality, with a focus on the American city,” including segregation, gentrification, and the impact of these forces on the mental and physical health of Black families. [1] She is the author of numerous books, including The Black Family: Mental Health Perspectives and Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It.[2] Most recently, she has co-edited a volume titled From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence. In 2018, she gave a TED talk which gives an overview of her work and her personal history and outlines her hopes for achieving equality.

Mindy Thompson Fullilove

Eritrean surgeon Haile T. Debas has, many times over, served as an example of what Black leadership can look like, and has shown how it can benefit others in a variety of ways. Debas, who came to UCSF in 1987 to serve as the Chair of the Department of Surgery, specializes in gastrointestinal physiology. During his time as Chair, UCSF “became one of the country’s leading centers for transplant surgery, the training of young surgeons, and basic and clinical research in surgery.”[3] He then went on to serve as the Dean of the School of Medicine for 10 years, from 1993-2003. In 1997, he was appointed as the 7th Chancellor of UCSF, a position that he agreed to hold for one year while also serving as Dean of the School of Medicine.

Haile T. Debas, photo courtesy of UCSF University Relations

Debas, in his long and distinguished career, has demonstrated a commitment to serving underserved areas, from his work in the Yukon Territories, where he practiced surgery early in his career, to a long-held dream of establishing a medical school in Eritrea. It was this commitment that led him to establish, in 2009, the UC Global Health Institute, which sought to leverage the expertise and resources of all ten UC campuses to address global health issues, which he says are “so big that single disciplines can’t tackle them.”[4] He also served as Executive Director of UCSF Global Health Sciences (GHS), established in 2003, which focuses on issues like diseases of poverty, chronic illnesses, and the global threat posed by certain infectious diseases, like COVID-19.

His work in global health has informed his support for women’s empowerment movements, and he notes, “In global health, women’s empowerment is the critical element—nothing will be accomplished to a successful end without women’s support.”[5] Debas also established the UCSF Department of Surgery’s Haile T. Debas Diversity Fellowship for Fourth Year Medical Students, which offers fourth year medical students a sub-internship in the Department of Surgery, as well as a $2,500 stipend.[6]  Debas appears often in Archives & Special Collections materials, as a part of the Office of the Dean’s records, as well as in the Global Health Sciences records and the Oral History collection.

[1] “Faculty – Mindy Fullilove,” The New School Milano, accessed February 18, 2021,  https://www.newschool.edu/milano/faculty/mindy-fullilove/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Haile Debas, MD,” UCSF Department of Surgery, accessed February 18, 2021, https://surgery.ucsf.edu/faculty/general-surgery/haile-debas,-md.aspx.

[4] Rachel Cox, “10 years, 10 campuses, one trailblazing career: Haile Debas reflects on UCGHI,” November 5, 2019, https://ucghi.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/10-years-10-campuses-one-trailblazing-career-haile-debas-reflects-ucghi.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Alexi Callen, “UCSF Department of Surgery Accepting Applications for 2020 Haile T. Debas Diversity Fellowship for Fourth Year Medical Students,” April 21, 2020, https://surgery.ucsf.edu/news-events/ucsf-news.aspx?id=84895/UCSF Department of Surgery Accepting Applications for 2020 Haile T. Debas Diversity Fellowship for Fourth Year Medical Students.

Save Our Stories: Support AIDS History Archive

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https://givingtogether.ucsf.edu/fundraiser/2359886

Over the past three decades, UCSF Archives & Special Collections has played a vital role in documenting the AIDS epidemic.

We are seeking your help to maintain and grow the AIDS History Project (AHP) archive as a critical, one-of-a-kind public record of the institutions and individuals involved in containing and treating the HIV both locally, and worldwide.

Please help support the UCSF AIDS History Project. We are hoping you will donate today and help us raise $50,000 by 2/1/2020 – please take a moment to do it now.

Your generosity advances vital work to collect, preserve, and provide universal access to stories of the AIDS epidemic.

35 years have passed since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and many of the original researchers, health care providers, and community activists who were on the front lines of defense against HIV have now begun to retire from public service. There is an urgent need to collect, preserve, and provide open access to their collections.

Your support will allow us to:

  • Catalog and digitize recently acquired collections, including, papers of Drs. Jay Levy and Steven G. Deeks, SF AIDS Foundation records
  • Record a new set of oral histories with clinicians, researchers, pharmaceutical and biotech scientists, health care workers, activists, community members, patients, and their family members
  • Expand the AIDS History Project statewide scope, solicit and acquire material fro regional community health centers
  • Organize exhibits and public events to share materials and stories preserved in the archives

Read more and donate.

With gratitude,
UCSF Archives & Special Collections team

Dr. Elbridge Best and Base Hospital 30 in WWI

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This is a guest post by Cristina Nigro, UCSF History of Health Sciences graduate student and curator of the UCSF Archives WWI exhibit.

Each year on the last Monday of May, our nation commemorates U.S. service members from all wars who died while on active duty. On this Memorial Day we pay special homage to the servicemen and women of World War I, as 2017 marks the centennial anniversary of the U.S. entrance into WWI.

Elbridge Best. From the John Homer Woolsey papers, MSS 70-5, box 1, photograph album.

Dr. Elbridge Best, graduate of the UC Medical School class of 1911 who later joined the UCSF faculty, served in WWI at Base Hospital No. 30 in Royat, France. Base Hospital No. 30 was organized by the UC Medical School in March 1917—the month before President Woodrow Wilson asked a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war with Germany. In a 1964 interview, Best recalled the early mobilization effort by him and his colleagues who “felt that the war was imminent” and who “were a little concerned with regard to the possible slowness of the White House deciding to declare war.”

Officers and enlisted personnel. From the John Homer Woolsey papers, MSS 70-5, box 1, photograph album.

Before leaving for the front, Best was put to work in the aviation unit established in San Francisco. He helped to medically examine applicants for the aviation corps in the summer and fall of 1917. Best was later transferred from the aviation unit to the Presidio in San Francisco. There, he “did regular duty until the mobilization of the Base Hospital 30 in November when we then stopped our other activities, lived as a unit until the transportation was arranged and we boarded the ship at Fort Mason to proceed down the west coast.”

The unit arrived in New York harbor in March 1918, staying at Camp Merritt for about a month before embarking on the journey abroad. Best recalled his experience with an influenza epidemic in New York at the time: “Many of the Army men were taken to the Rockefeller hospital for treatment. And each of the cases where fluid was found in the chest the procedure was to immediately insert a needle and draw the fluid. It became very evident that whenever we saw this done we would say to a friend that we will see this body in the morgue the next morning. So many of these boys died following the removal of the acute fluid that when we went to France we made it a rule never to draw any fluid off until after we were sure there was frank pus and it should be treated surgically. The result was that we lost none of those cases which were the cause of the high mortality at the Rockefeller hospital.”

Base Hospital #30 at Royat, France. From the John Homer Woolsey papers, MSS 70-5, box 1, photograph album

The staff of Base Hospital No. 30 arrived in Royat, France in May 1918. Best remembered that casualties were sent to the hospital soon after the unit arrived: “They came almost as soon as we had most of our material unpacked….The casualties from the front came down to us on trains, Red Cross trains, arranged with beds. And we removed the patients from the trains by way of the windows ordinarily. The one train was full of gas injuries, phosgene and mustard gas. Another trainload came all shot-up which the debridement had been done at the front. These trains ordinarily did not have mixed cases—they were usually all of one type—and they usually contained from four to five hundred wounded at a time.”

Loading patients on “D” train. From the Photograph collection, W, World War I.

Best recalled suddenly learning of the armistice on November 11, 1918: “Everybody was elated and as soon as the evening meal was over on that day, all of those who were not on duty went the three kilometer distance to Clermont-Ferrand to celebrate this notable event…After the armistice, some of us had the privilege of visiting French families in various country areas…We would go and have tea with a certain family or we would have dinner with some people or they would have a reception in which French and American people in the vicinity would appear. I am particularly reminded of one French family we visited in a lovely, old-style two story wooden home on a farm…These people spoke no English and we had to converse in French. And the philosophy, the problems, the day-by- day incidents that these people would gossip with us about were exactly the same as those that we would encounter among families in similar positions in the United States. The only difference between these delightful people and the people in our homes were that they spoke French and we spoke English.”

Misses Dunn and Ireland [nurses] leaving Clermont-Ferrand. From the John Homer Woolsey papers, MSS 70-5, box 1, photograph album.

None of the doctors, nurses, or dentists from UCSF who served their country during the Great War died in active duty, but all have since passed on. UCSF Archives and the UCSF History of Health Sciences Graduate Program honor their legacy with an exhibit, “DO THE BEST FOR OUR SOLDIERS”: University of California Medical Service in World War I, on display now on the main floor of the UCSF Library, 530 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, through April 2018. It is free and open to the public during Library hours.

View more WWI images and documents from the UCSF Archives collections on Calisphere.

Stone’s Synchrotron

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This season’s issue of UCSF Magazine, Fall 2013, includes a story inspired by a photograph in our collection and features an audio clip from one of our oral histories.

Robert Stone with Synchrotron, circac 1956

Robert Stone with Synchrotron, circa 1956

This compelling photograph (which, despite appearances, is not a scene from a sci-fi movie) depicts Dr. Robert Stone with the machine he created, the 70MeV electron synchroton. The synchrotron was a type of particle accelerator used to treat cancer patients with radiation from 1956 to 1964. Stone’s work contributed greatly to the safe clinical use of radiation.

The article in UCSF Magazine goes on to elaborate on Stone’s impact here at UCSF and on the wider medical community. The online version of the article also highlights a clip of Stone’s oral history, OH 23, taken in 1964. Be sure to check it out to hear Stone’s story in his own words!

View the issue as an online flipbook, download a pdf, download the iTunes app, or download the Android app. “Robert Stone and the Synchrotron” appears on page 50 of the Fall 2013 issue.

You can read more about Stone’s role in the history of Radiation Oncology at UCSF from 1928-1962 here.

UCSF Tobacco Control Oral History Collection

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You may know that the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education here at UCSF is an internationally respected collaborative effort dedicated to reducing deaths associated with tobacco and the tobacco industry, conducting research in the areas of how to treat tobacco addiction, the effects of second hand smoke, and other tobacco-related topics.  The Center works closely with the UCSF Library on the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library to collect and preserve documents created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities.  Our next activity together?  Processing the UCSF Tobacco Control Oral History Collection –  interviews with 150 physicians, epidemiologists, public health officials, community-based activists and educators, lobbyists and policy makers – all working in the area of tobacco control.

An interview with Stanton Glantz, Ph.D. Center Director and the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control at UCSF revealed that the Oral History project, conducted between 1994-2001, was an integral part of his National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded project to travel to 24 states and complete detailed histories of tobacco control policymaking and efforts by the tobacco industry to thwart these policies.  As Dr. Glantz and members of his research group travelled the country, they found key informants and recorded the interviews that would become part of this collection.  In part, these interviews helped inform the resulting Reports on State Tobacco Policy Making.  And the project goes on.  As state reports are continually researched, written and published, more interviews with individuals who can shed particular light on political activities and state tobacco control programs are conducted and recorded.

So, check back here next month to see how you can find out what is available, and how you can access and listen to this collection of cassette tapes!

René Radusky
UCSF Archives intern and student at San José State University, School of Library and Information Science concentrating in Archival Studies and Records Management

New Faces in Archives

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During 2013 fall semester the UCSF Archives is hosting two interns:

Rene Radusky, UCSF Archives intern

Rene Radusky, UCSF Archives intern

René Radusky
René is a 5th semester student at San José State University, School of Library and Information Science concentrating in Archival Studies and Records Management. She has an A.B. in Political Science from Brown University, and is making a career change after many years of working with low-income children and families in the not-for-profit sector. She also works part-time as the librarian at Escuela Bilingüe Internacional in Oakland, California. While learning archival theory and practice, René will work on processing the Tobacco Control Oral History Collection. She will also help us survey, arrange, and create an inventory for the UCSF Oral History Collection.

jesse_chairez_intern_ucsf

Jesse Chairez, UCSF Archives intern

Jesse Chiarez
Jesse is currently a senior at the University of San Francisco majoring in History with emphasis in Latin America and the United States. He is originally from Los Angeles and has lived there most of his life before coming to school here in the Bay Area. After he graduates from USF, Jesse is planning to apply to either medical school or a master’s program in Public Health, he still hasn’t decided. Jesse selected the UCSF Archives for his USF History Internship. This internship program is designed to be an opportunity for undergraduate history majors to learn about the many ways that history is practiced “in the real world.” Jesse will help us with several projects, including organizing University Relations audio-visual collection and preparing descriptions for the rare books identified for preservation program.

In the past year we have revived a long-standing tradition of providing a space to learn new skills and gain professional experience working in established archives to undergraduate and graduate students from the Bay Area colleges. We are excited that these two hard-working interns joined our team, please be on a look out for their dispatches from archives.

Robert L. Day Collection: Anatomy of an Archival Project – Part 4

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Bob Day: An Oral History

When Robert (Bob) Day retired from UCSF in 2012, his legacy could be measured not only in the number of years of service, students taught, and jokes cracked but also in pounds, volume, and linear feet. Readers of this blog know from recent posts that Bob Day was an inveterate collector of material related to the history of pharmacy in general and the UCSF School of Pharmacy in particular, and the material he accumulated over his 50 years with the university was donated to the UCSF Library’s Archives and Special Collections. The materials processed by archivists totaled 40 linear feet, over 45 boxes, and an untold number of individual items. You might be asking yourself, what does all of this material tell us? What is its significance? And what kind of person would be compelled to collect all of these items?

Robert Day and wife Dorothy, UCSF School of Pharmacy Commencement, 1958.

Robert Day and wife Dorothy, UCSF School of Pharmacy Commencement, 1958.

All of those questions were asked – and many of them answered – in a long, detailed, interesting, and rollicking oral history interview I conducted with Bob in the first three months of 2013. In partnership with the UCSF School of Pharmacy and the UCSF Library’s Archives and Special Collections, the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley planned and conducted this interview. In all, a little over 12 hours of interviews were committed to videotape, which were then transcribed, edited, and, now, made available to you here: http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/day_bob_public.pdf.

What transpired in those dozen hours? Continue reading →