Reframing Health Justice at UCSF

On a foggy Friday morning, a cluster of UCSF students in scrubs and backpacks huddle over poster boards a few blocks from the San Francisco immigration courthouse with local Democratic Socialists of America organizers. 

Between sips of coffee and quick check-ins, they letter out messages of welcome and protection for neighbors at risk of deportation. In another hour, they’ll be standing outside the courthouse doors, tracking ICE activity and supporting families, a presence they say has already helped prevent people from being taken into custody there.

For UCSF’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), mornings like this are as much a part of their education as any lecture on social determinants of health.

SJP at UCSF is an interprofessional coalition of graduate and professional students that connects Palestinian liberation to broader struggles for health justice. Founded in 2023, the group spans the School of Medicine and other graduate divisions, working alongside faculty and staff allies. 

Through teach-ins, fundraisers, court watch and campus demonstrations, SJP aims to “maximize resources on campus and raise awareness” while plugging into Bay Area movements that challenge occupation, militarization and other forms of state violence.

The group has become known for an almost relentless run of fundraisers and educational events. Over the past several months, members have hosted bake sales, lunchtime teach-ins tied to fundraising pushes and collaborations with cultural and identity-based organizations across campus.

Their agenda leaps off campus, too. Even though their work is anchored in Palestine, SJP has deliberately widened its focus over the last year and a half. That has meant co-sponsoring Sudan solidarity protests in Oakland and endorsing the Oakland Arms Embargo campaign, which calls on the city to cut ties with companies profiting from weapons used in conflicts abroad.

“We want folks to see how these struggles talk to each other,” said an SJP member, who asked that their name be withheld. “Palestine, Sudan, Congo, local immigrant communities — it’s all part of the same story about who gets to live with dignity.”

By their own rough estimates, those efforts have raised several thousand dollars. So far, the money has been allocated directly to on-the-ground efforts in Palestine and other crisis-stricken areas. The events also serve as low-barrier entry points for curious classmates who may not be ready to attend a protest but are willing to buy a pastry, listen to a talk or scan a QR code to sign a petition.

Students say they’ve “seen tangible responses” to this mix of fundraising and education — classmates who show up at the next action, faculty who quietly express support and community members unaffiliated with UCSF who now follow the group’s work.

SJP members come from multiple programs, and the group works in tandem with faculty and staff who have formed their own healthcare-focused Palestinian organizations. Together, they frame Palestine not as a distant “foreign policy” issue, but as a central case study in how structural violence shapes health.

“We’re trying to use the time we have here as students to build something meaningful,” a group member said in an email. “We want what we do at UCSF to matter to people far beyond these walls.”

Their mission, as they describe it, is tiered. On one level, they are part of a national SJP network that supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns and other efforts aimed at ending Israeli occupation and apartheid. 

On another, they are specifically pushing UCSF to acknowledge what they see as genocide in Gaza, to divest from institutions complicit in that violence and to invest instead in Palestinian healthcare infrastructure and civil society. 

The third tier is where the health campus context comes in: connecting Palestine to other frontline struggles, from Sudan to Congolese communities to local immigrant families, and grounding all of it in the language of health equity.

“We see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation,” the member said. “When we organize for Palestinian freedom, we’re also organizing for every community whose access to land, safety, and healthcare is under attack.”

Much of SJP’s work starts in group chats, classrooms and meeting rooms: regular body meetings, agenda items and action lists, delegating responsibilities for political awareness events or fundraisers, such as a lunchtime lecture titled “Medical Apartheid in Palestine” that was held at  the UCSF HEAR conference, a campus screening of the documentary “Sudan, Remember Us” in partnership with other student groups, and “People’s Tribunal” on healthcare — a space where attendees could hear testimony, reflect on how healthcare systems enact or resist violence and brainstorm concrete action steps.

Tension and Solidarity

SJP members are quick to note that organizing on a health sciences campus has not been easy task. They describe a tightening institutional climate around Palestine organizing: more police at events, barricades and surveillance at lectures, and what they see as a broader crackdown on Palestine-related activism. 

Their Justice and Advocacy (JAM) Petition about canceled and postponed curriculum — signed by well over a hundred students — frames these decisions as part of the same pattern of silencing. 

One flashpoint was the case of Denise Caramagno, a longtime campus violence-prevention advocate who received notice last year that UCSF intended to fire her after she publicly defended a faculty member’s critiques of Zionism and linked them to questions of health equity. 

In interviews with local media, Caramagno stated that she believed she was being pushed out for speaking up about Gaza and supporting her colleagues of color; however, the university has denied this characterization, citing confidentiality regarding personnel matters. 

SJP members helped organize protests outside campus and see her case as part of a wider pattern that also includes the earlier dismissal of physician-activist Dr. Rupa Marya and stories of nurses who were disciplined or pressured to leave after wearing visible symbols of solidarity with Palestine.

This tension resurfaced again in the preclinical curriculum. During a Life Stages lecture on interpersonal violence, a faculty member briefly mentioned Caramagno’s termination and invited students to revive a CARE Ambassador program she had started. Within days, administrators sent a forum post to the class calling the comment factually inaccurate and reminding students that personnel actions are confidential.

For SJP, the back-and-forth underscored how fraught even naming Palestine has become on campus.

These experiences have sharpened the group’s institutional demands. Members talk about pushing UCSF and the UC system to formally acknowledge the scale of harm in Gaza, to protect speech and organizing around Palestine, and to more explicitly incorporate settler colonialism and imperialism into health curricula, which was the original plan with JAM — goals they see as inseparable from their broader vision of Palestinian liberation and health justice.

At the same time, SJP members say their experience of repression has deepened their sense of community. SJP members describe being “heartwarmed by the community that has come from” the challenges, finding courage in peers who keep showing up, and feeling a new kind of solidarity with faculty and staff facing professional risk.

“Being part of SJP has allowed me to show up to UCSF in the way I actually want to show up,” one member said. “It’s about knowing there are people who will show up with you when you say the words others are afraid to say.”

SJP members said there are three ways for students and staff to get involved: show up to an event and introduce yourself, email the group at sjpatucsf@gmail.com to receive announcements or follow them on Instagram at @sjp.at.ucsf to keep up with actions.

“Even just being one more body in the room or one more person holding a sign makes a difference,” the group said. “We’re trying to build something that will outlast us, and that only happens if more people step in.”