Vicki Alexander at SFGH. Perinatal Health Project.
Vicki Alexander, MD, has dedicated her life to improving the social determinants of public health.
Alexander attended the UC San Francisco, where she completed her medical degree and residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1974. She went on to Columbia University, where she obtained her master’s degree in Public Health.
Dr. Alexander began as an Ob-Gyn Clinical Instructor at San Francisco General Hospital. She soon became the director of SFGH’s Perinatal Health Project, which served high-risk mothers and infants in the community. Alexander then relocated to New York, working as a clinical instructor and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Harlem Hospital. Eventually, she returned to the west coast and became the Maternal Child Health Director and Health Officer for the City of Berkeley until she retired in 2006.
Vicki Alexander at SFGH. Perinatal Health Project.
Alexander has participated in many organizations to improve the living conditions for women and children, including: Rainbow Coalition, Center for Constitutional Rights, Reproductive Rights National Network, Planned Parenthood, City Material and Child Health.
In 1978, she established the Coalition to Fight Infant Mortality in Oakland, which helped women with medical care and social issues.
In 2000, Alexander began the Black Infant Health program in Berkeley, which grew from her coalition at Highland Hospital. This was the foundational step to the creation of the Alameda County Coalition to decrease infant mortality.
Alexander is also the current founder and board president of Healthy Black Families (HBF), Inc., which dovetails with the Black Infant Health program. It was founded as a non-profit organization in July 2013 to support the health, growth, development, and future of Black individuals and families.
For her devotion towards health and social justice, Dr. Vicki has won many awards, including: Women of the Year Award (2011); Martin Luther King, Lifetime Achievement Award (2014); National Jefferson Award for Community Service (2015); Alameda County African American Black History Month Award (2017); Madame CJ Walker Award for Black Women (2017); and 15th Assembly District Woman of the Year Award (2017).
To learn more about Dr. Vicki, check out these articles available in our digital collection on HathiTrust and Synapse Archive:
Please meet our new archives assistant, Jazmin Dew who will be helping with diverse archival
projects in the next few months. Below is Jazmin’s bio:
Jazmin Dew
“My name is Jazmin Dew and I am thrilled to join the archives team as a temporary Archives Assistant. As a brief introduction, I have graduated from CSU, Sacramento with a Bachelor’s degree in Food and Nutrition. Currently, I am attending Clarion University’s Information and Library Science online graduate program. I also have a broad range of experience working in various types of libraries, such as Vacaville Public Library as a Coordinator and Concord High School’s library as an Instructional Media Assistant. During my time at the UCSF Archives & Special Collections, I am excited to gain more practical experience as well as an in-depth look into the archives and special collections field. I look forward to working with you all over the next few months.”
The archives team is wishing you joy and peace during the holidays and throughout the New Year.
As 2019 comes to an end, we wanted to express our gratitude for the ongoing support of our colleagues, donors, interns, and collaborators.
The Archives & Special Collections will be closed from Saturday, December 21, 2019 through Wednesday, January 1st, 2020. We will reopen on Thursday, January 2nd.
If you submit a question through Ask an Archivist or make a reservation for the reading room during that time, please note that we will begin reviewing reference questions and reading room bookings when we re-open on Thursday, January 2, 2020.
UCSF Archives & Special
Collections was awarded a $14,986 local assistance grant by the California
State Library for the “Documenting the LGBTQ Health Equity Movement in
California” project.
Preserving
California’s LGBTQ History
is a grant program that funds projects that support physical and/or digital
preservation and digitization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer
(LGBTQ) materials relating to California history and culture. This California
State Library program will award a total of $500,000 in one-time grants for
projects from large archival institutions with a global reach, as well as
smaller, localized collections. The program aims to preserve materials that
demonstrate the significant role of LGBTQ Californians and the LGBTQ movement
in this state, as well as providing a more comprehensive and inclusive view of
California’s history.
The UCSF project will support
preservation through processing and partial digitization of two collections
documenting the LGBTQ health equity movement in California:
• San Francisco AIDS Foundation Magnet Program Records
• UCSF LGBT Resource Center Records
San Francisco AIDS Foundation Magnet Program card
The San Francisco AIDS
Foundation (SFAF) Magnet Program is a health and wellness program located in
the SFAF’s Strut Center in the heart of the Castro District of San Francisco.
They offer community events, sexual health services, substance use counseling,
PrEP, HIV and STI testing, learning events and rotating art displays from queer
artists. In spring 2001, a Community
Advisory Board comprised of community members, social workers, and activists
began meeting regularly to discuss how to proceed with the development of a new
Gay Men’s Health Center. The new center chose
to address gay men’s health in innovative ways instead of simply replicating
existing programs in a new location. Since 2003, Magnet’s overarching vision
has been to promote the physical, mental, and social well-being of gay men.
Magnet activities are guided by the following core values of the agency:
self-determination, access, sexual expression, diversity, and leadership.
Magnet provides individual STI/HIV services and community programs including
book readings, art exhibits, town hall forums, and other social events. In 2007
Magnet merged with the SFAF to increase the services available to men
throughout the Bay Area. Magnet also serves transgender, gender non-conforming,
gender non-binary, and gender-queer people.
This collection includes
founding documents, surveys of clients, assessments of services, marketing
materials, advocacy campaigns, photographs, community art pieces, and posters
documenting the establishment and activities of the Magnet program.
UCSF Visibility Project flyer, 2006 Chancellor’s Award for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Leadership
The LGBT Resource Center
serves as the hub for all queer life at UCSF, including the campus and medical
center. It works toward creating and maintaining a safe, inclusive, and
equitable environment for LGBTQIA+ students, staff, faculty, post-docs,
residents, fellows, alumni, and patients. It aims to sustain visibility and a
sense of community throughout the many campus sites. This community takes an
intersectional approach and is committed to building workplace equity,
promoting student and staff leadership, and providing high-quality,
culturally-congruent care to UCSF patients. Founded in 1998, it was the first
LGBT resource center in a health science institution.
This collection includes the center’s
founding documents, traces the earlier LGBT community activities in the 1970s
through the 1980s, and contains materials chronicling the history and evolution
of the center. It also includes records of diverse events organized by the
center: Coming Out Monologues, Trans Day of Remembrance & Resilience, and
Trans Day of Visibility, as well as correspondence and announcements related to
OUTlist, Mentoring Program, and Annual LGBTQIA+ Health Forum. These materials also
document UC-wide advocacy work for providing equal benefits for same-sex
domestic partners.
The UCSF Archives & Special
Collections have been working on preserving materials documenting the LGBTQ
health equity movement in California. These two recently acquired collections
will enable researchers to investigate these communities’ efforts to address health-related
issues and advocate for health equity.
The Magnet collections allow researchers to
investigate how the “San Francisco model” of AIDS care continued to evolve in
the twenty-first century by providing free and equitable health care, education,
and community space. Both collections contribute to an understanding of the
medical, social, and political processes that merged to develop effective means
of treating those with AIDS and other illnesses.
Diverse audiences will benefit
from having access to this project’s archival collections, including scholars
in disciplines such as medicine, nursing, jurisprudence, journalism, history
and sociology, college students, and members of the general public pursuing
individual areas of interest.
The collections included in
this project are currently only accessible at the UCSF Archives reading room.
The digitization of these collections will grant access to these valuable
primary sources and other hard-to-find materials to scholars, students, and
others worldwide. This project will significantly expand the historical record
of the LGBTQ health equity movement in California and make a new corpus of
materials related to the movement’s progress discoverable to a broad audience.
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
Through its newsletter CDL “highlights new collections on Calisphere that feature community voices and stories. These collections are made available in close collaboration with local community members and broaden our worldview through the diverse narratives and myriad perspectives that resonate in the collections.
Spotlight on the AIDS History Project
The UCSF Archives & Special Collections was a pioneering repository that collected materials documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, one of the most significant public-health events of the late twentieth century and an ongoing challenge throughout the world.
The AIDS History Project (AHP) began in 1987 as a joint effort of historians, archivists, AIDS activists, health care providers, and others to secure historically significant resources reflecting responses to the crisis in San Francisco. Starting in 1991, the Archives received several grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to fund the survey, acquisition, arrangement, and description of carefully selected records from numerous San Francisco-based agencies and organizations whose work focused on the AIDS crisis.” Continue reading: https://cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2019/10/30/diverse-narratives-and-myriad-perspectives-new-collections-on-calisphere/
Since 1963, the UCSF Archives & Special Collections holdings
have included the historic Danz collection of ocular pathology specimens. The
set, one of 13 believed to have been made, was originally intended as a
teaching tool for use in medical schools. These blown orbs, some still retaining
a long delicate stem, were made in Germany, in the 1880’s, by master
glassblower, Amandus Muller. Each glass eyeball depicts, in minute detail, the
various diseases and defects that can afflict the eye and is a unique
masterpiece of the art of glass making.
In June 2018 the collection was examined by Tracy Power and Lesley Bone to determine the nature and scope of condition problems that these objects. Past treatments and current breakages were evaluated, the deterioration of the glass was examined, and current storage conditions were assessed.
While the majority of the glass eyeballs were in stable
condition, there were ironically a couple that were themselves suffering from
glass disease. This presents with a sticky surface; as a component of the glass
leaches out of the surface due to an instability in the glass mix. These
surfaces readily attract dust.
Of the previously repaired items, some were in stable
condition, but most were in poor condition due to deterioration of the repair
materials used and inferior skills of the person or people doing the repairs. One
particularly peculiar repair was filled with bright red dental wax.
The eyeballs were stored in their original compartmented box, with light damaged (faded), velvet-covered cavities for each specimen, and a hinged lid with a glass cover. The box was still serviceable, but the cavities for the eyeballs had wads of old cotton wool, which was not suitable for the collection since the blown balls retained the thin tubular glass extensions that had been snapped from the rod when the ball was blown. These tended to snag on the cotton.
A treatment plan was agreed upon which would include
upgrading the storage container, cleaning all of the glass eyeballs, and
repairing the broken glass orbs.
Improved Housing
The eyeballs were removed
sequentially for cleaning, and at that time the cavities in the display box
were cleaned and new, improved supports were made. The old cotton wool was replaced with new
storage materials that will not be as likely to snag the glass tips. Small pillows were made of polyester batting
in Holytex fabric. The glass pane in the
box was cleaned with detergent and water.
Several discolored areas of paper on the box were toned with conservation
stable watercolors and some lifting edges of paper were glued down.
Old cotton wool was removed and replaced by individually made pillows of archival materials.
Cleaning of the glass eyeballs
Each glass eyeball was
carefully cleaned. A detergent designed
specifically for cleaning glass was used for this process. Handling the eyeballs safely was a major
concern and we ended up using foam tubes to make little doughnuts for the glass
balls to sit in. The foam was held in
place with toothpicks, so their creation and adjustment was relatively quick.
During the cleaning we identified some additional cracks in the glass eyeballs
that hadn’t been obvious until they were wet up. This step was very satisfying as the eyeballs
went from dull and cloudy to glistening after cleaning.
Cleaning the glass and the compartments in the box.
Repairing of Glass Eyeballs
Before the eyeballs could be repaired,
those with unsightly or failing old repairs had to be undone. The method varied depending on the types of
repair materials previously used.
Several of the repairs had been done with red wax. The wax remained soft and sticky making it
messy and it did not closely resemble glass.
The wax material was removed by gently warming it. Some of the other old adhesives had failed after
becoming brittle. The brittle material
could be brushed from the surfaces, with special care taken to not scratch the
glass. Other old repair materials were
removed with solvents.
Old repair with red wax
Old repair with red wax
Old repair undone and redone with improved materials and techniques
Old repair with pieces misaligned
Disassembled and repaired in proper alignment
Repairing
the individual eyeballs was the most challenging part of the process, as they
are thin and delicate. Added to that,
the high-grade epoxy that was designed for glass conservation can take several
days to fully set. While this can be advantageous,
as it allows adjustment of pieces, it also means the fine shards have to be
held in place for long periods of time while the resin sets. An advantage of
this epoxy is that it is very thin and can be fed by capillary action into
cracks. That property was useful for
many of the eyeballs. Also this adhesive has the added advantage of being far
superior to commercially available epoxy resins in terms of long-term stability
and greater light-stability, therefore it does not yellow like commercially
available epoxies.
Before treatment
After cleaning and gluing
Before treatment
After cleaning and gluing
Once the eyeballs were repaired, a few had areas where the fragments of the glass were still missing. Glass eyeballs that were incomplete were filled with tinted thermoplastic resin mixtures and details such as veins, were inpainted (inpainting is the process of restoring lost or deteriorated surface decoration or details on an artwork) with commercially ground pigments in acrylic resin.
Before treatment, misaligned and losses
Old repairs undone
Treatment completed with pieces glued together and area of loss filled and veins inpainted on the fill
Eyeball before treatment, in pieces but with some old repairs still intact
After removing old repairs
Pieces glued together and held with tape. Area of loss remained
Area of loss after gluing all pieces together
After repair, glued together and area of loss filled with tinted resin mixture
After repair showing area that was filled
The glass eyeballs were incredible to work on. They were beautifully made, if often difficult to look at. Only one of the eyeballs examined was failing due to unstable glass, or a poor match between the cream under layer and the colored surface glass. The glass blower had incredible mastery in working with glass in addition to skill in depicting the defects and conditions. We hope that after this conservation project the glass eyeballs continue to illustrate medical conditions and inspire awe for years to come.
This is a guest post by exhibit curator Sabrina Oliveros
When HIV/AIDS first seized the nation’s attention in the early 1980s, it was a disease with no name, known cause, treatment, or cure. Beginning as a medical mystery, it turned into one of the most divisive social and political issues of the 20th century.
On
October 1, 2019, UCSF Archives & Special Collections is opening the exhibit
They Were Really Us: The UCSF Community’s Early Response to AIDS.
Featuring materials from the Archives’ extensive AIDS History Project Collections, the show highlights ways individual
professionals affiliated with UCSF acted to address HIV/AIDS following its
outbreak. Their responses included working in and with the larger San Francisco
community – and continue to impact HIV/AIDS care and research today.
The
exhibit title comes from a statement by Dr. Paul Volberding, who co-founded the
country’s first dedicated AIDS Clinic in 1983; he now serves as the Director of
UCSF’s AIDS
Research Institute:
“The
patients were exactly our age… all those other ways that we tend to separate
ourselves meant very little when you realize that the patients had gone to the
same schools, they listened to the same music, they went to the same
restaurants. So they were really us… which added to the commitment that I think
all of us had.”
Early
milestones
The first proofs of that
commitment are traced through displays on the main lobby (third floor) of the
UCSF Library.
Here, papers, slides,
photographs, and artifacts help outline early milestones in HIV/AIDS research
and care. These include the foundation of the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Clinic at UCSF, which
sought to understand the mysterious “cancer” that turned out to be AIDS; the
discovery of the HIV virus in 1983 by Dr. Jay Levy; the establishment of the
outpatient and inpatient AIDS clinics at San Francisco General Hospital; and
the development of the holistic San Francisco Model of AIDS Care.
Pioneering and compassionate,
this model treated people with AIDS not simply as patients requiring medical
attention, but as complex individuals also in need of psychological, social,
economic, and political support.
Excerpts from the diary of Bobbi
Campbell – a UCSF nursing student
who championed the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement – help tell some
of these individual stories. So do a selection of newsletters and other
materials that lend voices to persons with AIDS.
A
loaned section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt caps off the displays.
Community
voices
The
outbreak of HIV/AIDS devastated the city of San Francisco; it also mobilized the
community. Exhibits on the first floor of the library showcase the work done by
community organizations that, beyond the medical front, fought HIV/AIDS.
Reproductions
of posters – mostly from UCSF’s longest-running partners, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Shanti Project – represent outreach and educational
campaigns necessary to combat the disease. Materials from Mobilization Against AIDS and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
(ACT-UP) speak to the political battle that AIDS became.
On
the fifth floor of the library, displays touch on two more milestones following
the 1980s.
The
first, UCSF’s sponsoring of the 6th International Conference on
AIDS, is one of the many
examples of how physicians and researchers have expanded their work on a global
scale. Revisiting this 1990 conference is timely, as the 23rd
International Conference on AIDS
will take place in Oakland and San Francisco in July next year – the first time
the conference will be in the Bay Area in nearly three decades.
The
second milestone, the founding of the AIDS Research Institute in 1996, puts a
focus on the UCSF’s continuing efforts to find a cure, and end HIV/AIDS once
and for all.
Mauricio Velasco is a young emerging professional in the museum industry. Born in San Salvador, El Salvador and raised in Los Angeles, he relocated from Los Angeles to attend the University of San Francisco. At USF, he aims to further his education while simultaneously gaining more work experience; he is currently interning as a Guest Assistant Curator for the University of California, San Francisco where he is assisting on their newest exhibition on AIDS titled, “They Were Really Us: UCSF’s Early Response to the AIDS Epidemic”.
As an Anthropology Major from the University of California, Riverside, Mauricio has a background in the study of human societies and cultural development. During his early college years he worked as an art handler and preparator in his university’s museum, which is composed of three distinct spaces: The California Museum of Photography, Sweeney Art Gallery, and Barbara & Art Culver Center of the Arts. Shortly after obtaining his BA, he started an Internship in the Collections Department at The Wende Museum of the Cold War. The Wende Museum is an art museum, historical archive, and educational institution located in Culver City, California. It is here that he worked other unique jobs found in the museum industry like that of a registrar, docent, and event staff member. After working at his university’s museum and The Wende Museum, Mauricio decided he wanted to have a career in the museum industry because of his love for the arts. Mauricio applied to the University of San Francisco’s Museum Studies Program shortly after.
Mauricio is now looking to network and collaborate with like-minded people who wish to push the envelope on what a museum can do as a public institution for its community. He is especially interested in cultural and historical museums. In his spare time he likes some rest and relaxation. When traveling, he is sure to visit the local museum, whether it is in Auckland, New Zealand, at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki or at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
UCSF Archives and Special Collections is pleased to announce that the Arthur E. Guedel Anesthesia Collection is now processed. The collection’s finding aid is available publicly on the Online Archive of California. Collection processing made possible through support from the Arthur E. Guedel Memorial Anesthesia Center Board of Trustees.
Arthur E. Guedel, MSS 2016-03, carton 12, folder 5
Arthur E Guedel, M.D., was an anesthesiologist and clinical professor of anesthesia at the University of Southern California. The collection documents Dr. Guedel’s long career as an anesthesiologist. The collection includes a variety of material related to his research and his professional service. The collection also includes material from Dr. A.E. Bennett, Dr. William Neff, Dr. Leonard Ramsay Thompson, and Dr. Richard C. Gill’s Ecuadorian curare expedition. The collection also includes material from the Guedel Memorial Anesthesia Center and includes administration files, photographs, and correspondence.
Material in this collection relates to Guedel’s work and others in the anesthesia field, including files regarding anesthesia, anesthesia machines and equipment, ether, chloroform, curare, and other related topics. Material includes correspondence, reports and publications, files related to conferences and meetings, photographs, audiovisual recordings, artifacts, computer media, and other material.
Richard Gill Making Curare with Ecuadorian Native, MSS 2016-03, carton 12, folder 19
You can view the collection finding aid on the Online Archive of California. If you would like to visit the UCSF
Archives and Special Collections and work with the complete physical
collection, please make an appointment with us.
