A multidisciplinary team from SFDPH, the San Francisco Health Network and Zuckerberg San Francisco General received two prestigious equity awards in December recognizing their innovative efforts to deliver high-quality, equitable care for heart failure patients, with a focus on addressing social and behavioral needs of Black/African Americans.

The team received the 2024 Bernard J. Tyson National Award for Excellence in Pursuit of Healthcare Equity from The Joint Commission and Kaiser Permanente and the 2024 Quality Leader Award from the California Association of Public Hospitals & Health Systems and California Health Care Safety Net Institute. These honors recognize innovative initiatives, such as integrating AI-driven tools in electronic health records that provide recommendations about medical and social care and establishing an addiction medicine/cardiology co-management clinic that combined primary care, cardiology, social medicine, addiction medicine, and palliative care. Results of this work included eliminating the gap in readmission rates for Black/African American patients, reducing readmission rates by 13%, and lowering mortality risk by more than 6%.

We are honored by these achievements, which reflect the strength of the entire city’s public healthcare system and our commitment to equity in healthcare.