THE SFMS COMMUNITY SERVICE FOUNDATION

The San Francisco Medical Society Community Service Foundation, a tax-exempt 501(c)3 charitable foundation, is now fully operative and the conduit for many of the projects mentioned here. It also serves as the grantor institution for SFMS members' (and others) research and educational grants, offering low overhead, solid accounting, and the good name of the SFMS. For information or to discuss project ideas: Steve Heilig, 415/561-0850 x270 or heilig@sfms.org.

About the Foundation

The SFMS Community Service Foundation (a charitable 501 (c)(3) organization) serves to collaborate with other community health organizations on projects such as tobacco and anti-smoking education, TB control and prevention education, child immunization and other child health and safety programs, violence prevention, AIDS education, and more.

In the physician professional and educational programs arena, projects have included exploration of critical ethics and bioethics issues, quality assurance programs to support physicians to maintain physician/patient relationships within the context of managed care; efforts to support the community-based component of medical education, education and policy on other public health and confronting domestic violence, to cite a few.

Current Projects

Domestic Violence:

The SFMS CSF provided funds for the development of the first SFMS guidelines on domestic violence screening and intervention. This brochure represents a concise and clinically-based approach to this complex issue, and distills knowledge from existing, much-longer documents. The brochure has been widely distributed and well-received by clinicians city-wide and beyond and was cited in the Journal of the American Medical Association as one of the best such resources. Printing for the first version was kindly underwritten by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories. Click here to see the full version online; printed copies are available from the SFMS.

Medical Ethics:

The SFMS CSF is working to address the chronic problem of a shortage of organ donors via development of new policy and practices in this arena, utilizing funds provided by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.  If successful, this effort could revolutionize one aspect of the way organs are procured, hopefully with a significant increase in donations.

The CSF was also the recipient of a grant from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation for the development of new approaches to the issue of medical futility. Under the grant, the SFMS-based Bay Area Network of Ethics Committees (BANEC) developed guidelines publshed in the Western Journal of Medicine, which were the focus of much attention in the professional and public media and have served as the basis for new policies at hospitals around the state.

The procedural model for this project was the BANEC-developed consensus guidelines on physician-hastened death, published in in the Western Journal of Medicine and widely discussed in the media, including on the front page of the New York Times.

A second grant was also been received from Gerbode for use by Stephen Jamison, PhD of the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Jamison developed and presented professional education on the topic of "responding to requests for aid in dying."

Inquiries about these projects, and about use of the SFMS CSF as a low-overhead tax-exempt option for funding appropriate proposals, may be directed to Steve Heilig at the SFMS.

Donations

We invite you to become a supporter of the SFMS Community Service Foundation. All donors will be acknowledged in San Francisco Medicine; please let us know if you would prefer to remain anonymous.

Donations may be made at four levels:
President's Circle: $5000 or more
Officer's Circle: $1,000 to $4,999
Director's Circle: $100 to $999
Member's Circle: $99 or less

If you would like to make a contribution, please contact us at 415-561-0850.