The San Francisco AHEC is hosted by the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium (SFCCC), a partnership of ten non-profit community health centers and homeless clinics in the heart of San Francisco. The AHEC hosts a Community HealthCorps program that exposes potential health professionals to community health in underserved areas. The AHEC supports the Community HealthCorps program at SFCCC. Members are committed to a year-long service learning program, working as outreach and health educators in member clinics; shadowing health professionals in clinics and on the homeless van; and helping the outreach and education tasks for Covered California. A majority of the members go on to be trained as health professionals and are interested in working with the clinic and health center-served populations.
The AHEC also arranges rotations and internships for primary care residents and nursing students in community health settings and provides continuing education programs for practicing health professionals. The AHEC sponsors a Health Care for the Homeless program (SOS Van) that provides outreach, health education and psycho-social support to the city’s homeless community by health professionals, medical residents, students and nursing students. To date, the program has trained hundreds of UCSF primary care medical residents, UCSF PRIME medical students, and numerous other students. After SOS rotations, residents and medical students are able to recognize and overcome barriers to health care services for the homeless population; recognize and treat medical and psycho-social issues of the homeless population and successfully work with a multi-disciplinary team, including outreach workers and case managers. After completing rotations, all participants have stated that the experience reinforced their interest in primary care and in working with underserved urban populations.
For more information, please contact the Center Director – Beau Sanchez, MPH, bsanchez@sfccc.org
Click here to view the San Francisco AHEC Brochure.