"As a resident I had heard amazing things about the UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship and Fellowship Director, Christina Mangurian. I wanted to relocate back to the SF Bay Area and was looking for a way to develop a community of psychiatrists in the area, better understand the mental health care system and develop a skillset that would allow me to move into a leadership role within public psychiatry. The fellowship did all of those things and more. Through the fellowship I gained a deeper understanding of our mental health care system, problems and creative solutions. I expressed interest in a primary care psychiatric setting and was placed at the Richard Fine People's Clinic (a safety net primary care clinic at SFGH). In this role I did a combination of psychiattric consultation to PCPs, resident teaching, and a research projectt on an Adapted Collaborative Care model that is currently under review for publication. The education and clinical experience was only partt of what made the fellowship amazing. The mentorship and support from Christina, Jim and my site supervisor was the most meaningful mentorship I have had in all of my training. The 3 other fellows in the program were incredible and we all connected and kept in touch. The fellowship helped me secure my first job as a Clinical Instructor at my same site placement and has since helped me move closer to my long term career goals. I highly recommend this fellowship for anyone with interest in public psychiatry."
-PPF Graduate 2020
"The UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship was invaluable in helping me build a wonderful and rewarding career in community psychiatry. Through the fellowship, I was also able to narrow down my interests and find supportive mentors to help me develop them further. After doing my placement at Chinatown North Beach Mental Health Services, I was offered a position there and now I get to put principles of cultural psychiatry into action, teach students, and work with the administration to improve patient care in the system."
-PPF Graduate 2016
"My decision to join the San Francisco Department of Public Health and pursue a career dedicated to public psychiatry in San Francisco was most definitely a direct outcome of the UCSF Public Psychiatry fellowship. The fellowship allowed me to truly experience what it would be like to practice as a psychiatrist in the Department of Public Health and to begin to imagine a career working with amazing colleagues and mentors."
-PPF Graduate 2015
"As a child psychiatrist trained at NYU/Bellevue, I had heard from great things about the UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship from a former NYU resident. I knew that I wanted to be relocate to the SF Bay Area, network with other psychiatrists at UCSF and the local community systems of care, and learn more about working in the public sector. As the first child psychiatry fellow in the PPF program, I chose my site placement with the SF County child mental health clinics, doing a combination of outpatient psychiatry and intensive wraparound services. I was given exposure to meetings during which the county coordinates care for complex children and families, attended county medical director's meetings, and had the opportunity to conduct a quality improvement project of my own. Throughout the year I had amazing mentors within SF County who provided greater insights into their work as leaders within the county system. The fellowship itself was incredibly supportive with wonderful colleagues who had shared interests, great UCSF mentors in Christina, Melanie, and Jim who provided guidance throughout the year, and helped me to find a great job placement at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland. As a better informed child psychiatrist, I am currently working on ways to improve integration of care with our pediatrics clinics and school clinics, restructure pediatric residency training in psychiatry, and improve administrative processes at UBCHO. I have also joined the UCSF Diversity Committee and the UCSF Cultural Area of Distinction (AoD) program! I have fond memories of the fellowship and strongly recommend it for others with similar interests!"
-PPF Graduate 2016
"The UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship was a wonderful experience for me. As a transplant from New York, I was able to acquaint myself with the mental health care system in the Bay Area and receive excellent mentorship and career advice. The fellowship helped lead to my faculty appointment at UCSF after graduation."
-PPF Graduate 2013
"The fellowship broadens your understanding of the world of Public Psychiatry from the patient to the public foundation level. In terms of my job now, it helped me to immediately calculate caseload requirements, estimate future workforce requirements, run productive meetings, understand workflow processes, develop interdisciplinary information flow, and effectively run the clinic I am in charge of now. I received practical straight forward feedback that has helped me grow as a clinician and leader. If you have any desire to help develop systems of care in public mental health this will be an exciting program for you."
-PPF Graduate 2016
"I chose to train in the UCSF Public Psychiatry Fellowship to explore my interests in population health and public policy. The fellowship provided me with fantastic opportunities to learn from and network with some of the many inspiring individuals working in the public health space in San Francisco. One of my sites was the historic Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic and I enjoyed learning about the unique challenges and history of the clinic while placed there. Since completion of the fellowship I feel far more confident in my abilities to address administrative issues and engage in mental health advocacy. I've gained some great friends, colleagues, and mentors that continue to be inspiring and collaborative with me as my career moves forward."
-PPF Graduate 2016
“I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a UCSF/SFGH Public Psychiatry Fellow. I had always thought that given the choices of fellowships out there, I would do a public psychiatry fellowship, and considered going to Columbia University for such an opportunity. Luckily, Christina Mangurian came along, and made the fellowship a reality immediately after my graduation from residency. As such, I had the amazing chance to learn much more about this system, where I had grown up as a psychiatrist. I met leaders in the system that could tell us where we had been, why we had been there, and where we were headed; I had close mentoring from Jim Dilley and Christina Mangurian, who were supportive, experienced teachers and leaders/managers, but also avid learners, which is the best modeling I could receive. I was additionally incredibly lucky to work at Chinatown North Beach Mental Health Clinic and get to ask naïve questions about our system of care, AVATAR, being a medical director, and everything in between to Hung-Ming Chu, who was another gigantic role model (humble, dedicated, kind, encouraging, and super smart). An important aspect of the fellowship is the health services/QI research project. It’s a challenge to put a full research project while working nearly full time at a clinic. We were lucky to get good guidance from Martha Shumway, and the support of a dedicated research assistant. As the term “fellowship” implies, getting to know my co-fellow, another person ready to launch into a career was a tremendously positive part of the experience. Lastly, the encouragement to present our work in front of others, thus polishing our public speaking skills has been very important. I am currently the medical director at Citywide Case Management, a job that I was lucky to get a year out of fellowship. There was definitely a learning curve at first, but the fellowship was critical in providing the skills and confidence to step into this role. Since graduating from the fellowship, I’ve had the chance to interact with many fellows. They make me feel proud, as they are smart, dedicated, and have a lot of “heart”. They are feeding a much needed pipeline for public mental health providers in our system and beyond.”
-PPF Graduate 2012
"My experiences in the UCSF Public Psychiatry Program were an incredible launching pad for careers in both clinical and community leadership. The clinical work component, through the San Francisco Dept of Public Health, offered opportunity to treat individuals with serious mental illness in a supportive environment, surrounded by experienced clinicians. The didactics and field trips gave me an understanding of our public mental health framework allowing me to be an effective advocate for population health changes in my community. Finally, the research component helped me to zero in on my particular area of interest at the interface between primary care and psychiatry, make a meaningful contribution to the literature and network with some of the field's experts. I have taken this training to my hometown in Idaho and am working in community, academic and advocacy leadership roles with confidence. I can not recommend this training program more highly."
-PPF Graduate 2012