The San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership (SFHIP) is a cross-sector collaboration designed to improve the health and wellness of all San Franciscans. Seeking to bring together multiple sectors impacting the health of all San Franciscans, SFHIP is composed of City health officials, private hospitals, UCSF, SFUSD, foundations, and community equity coalitions. To ensure community engagement, SFHIP includes coalitions that represent San Francisco's communities of color, including the African American Community Health Equity Council, Asian & Pacific Islander Health Parity Coalition, and Chicano/Latino/Indígena Health Equity Coalition.

Our Goals

SFHIP has three primary goals:
*To facilitate ALIGNMENT of San Francisco’s priorities, resources, and actions to improve health and well-being
*To ensure that HEALTH EQUITY is addressed throughout program planning and service delivery
*To promote COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS that support health and well-being

Our Work

SFHIP carries out its activities through four different approaches:

• Policy: advocating for policies that benefit the health of our communities
• Partnership – collaborating with organizations and initiatives that aim to address health equity in San Francisco
• Linkages & Networking – establishing networks to build upon existing resources and expand scope of influence
• Initiatives – developing programs or actions that address the health inequities across vulnerable populations in San Francisco

In 2019, SFHIP produced the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), a tool used to inform the community about San Franciscans’ health, identifying key priorities for the city and county, and promoting a better understanding of health inequities. The San Francisco CHNA 2019 identified two foundational issues contributing to local health needs: racial health inequities and poverty.

In 2020, SFHIP used the CHNA and community input to identify three topic areas that SFHIP will focus on to address health and social inequities in the City. They are: 

• Community Healing: Social determinants of health and other factors often require a need for increased healing in communities of color and poor communities. This can happen through culturally impactful interventions, effective policies that focus on the needs of communities, and community-based empowerment, education, and outreach strategies. 
• Economic Inclusion: Greater health impacts are possible when resources among health providers can be leveraged to support community-based solutions. This institutional equity approach seeks to identify creative ways to utilize our cross-sector collaboration to promote economic inclusion. 
• Food Security: Before COVID-19, SFHIP identified significant subpopulations within San Francisco do not receive daily healthy meals or did not know how they would obtain their next meals. Since the pandemic and subsequent unemployment rates, this issue is reaching critical proportions. SFHIP seeks to identify one or more subpopulations and strategies to employ to assist in addressing this issue. 

SFHIP Steering Committee

SFHIP receives backbone support from Facente Consulting, including project management support to connect SFHIP’s multiple efforts, action items, and external relationships, as well as strategic support to help SFHIP achieve its shared goals and vision. SFHIP's Steering Committee members include:

Alex Mitra
St. Marys Medical Center

Angela Sun
Chinese Hospital 

Christina Shea
RAMS, Inc. (API Health Parity Coalition)

Deena Lahn
SF Community Clinic Consortium

Esperanza Macias
IFR (Chicano/Latino/Indigena Health
Equity Coalition)

Jennifer Varano
Saint Francisco Memorial Hospital

Jim Illig
Kaiser Permanente

Kate Weiland
California Pacific Medical Center

Kevin Grumbach
UCSF

Monique LeSarre
Rafiki Coalition (African American Community
Health Equity Council) 

Nicole Johnson
Human Services Network

Saeeda Hafiz
SFUSD

Tomás Aragon
SF. Dept. of Public Health