UCSF Wins 5 Regional CASE Awards for Excellence in Communications, Advancement During COVID-19
UC San Francisco won five gold awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in this year’s regional competition, including four for COVID-19 communications.
The awards – two Grand Golds and three Golds – span work from the Office of Communications and the University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR) for photography, publications, events, video and writing.
The annual CASE Awards of Excellence recognize and showcase the best practices at educational institutions, including work in alumni relations, fundraising, public/government relations, advancement services, special events and outstanding communications. UCSF competes in CASE’s District VII, which covers Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands and Utah.
Grand Gold
Series of Related Photographs
The Office of Communications highlighted the work of 40 UCSF volunteer health workers who teamed up with frontline medical staff in Navajo Nation as COVID-19 surged in the region in April 2020. The photograph series followed nurses and physicians from the UCSF HEAL Initiative as they joined the fight at five hospitals serving Navajo patients.
Archna Eniasivam, MD, a HEAL volunteer working in Navajo Nation, checks in during rounds with sheltered Navajo resident Ronald Hood at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Gallup, NM. This photograph is one of a series documenting the work of UCSF volunteers in the Navajo nation that won a Grand Gold CASE Award. Photo by Barbara Ries
Anne Montgomery (right), MD, a UCSF resident and HEAL volunteer in Navajo Nation, teams up with Michelle Lynch (left), a Navajo nursing assistant in Internal Medicine at Gallup Indian Medical Center (GIMC), to do rounds with local sheltered residents at the Days Inn Motel in Gallup. Photo by Barbara Ries
Anne Montgomery, MD, a UCSF resident and HEAL volunteer in Navajo Nation, talks with Calvin Hasgood, 74, who was part of a program to house homeless in hotels and motels during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Barbara Ries
Anne Montgomery, MD, a UCSF resident and HEAL volunteer in Navajo Nation, goes door to door on rounds with local sheltered residents at the Days Inn Motel in Gallup, New Mexico. Photo by Barbara Ries
Forty UCSF volunteer health workers who teamed up with frontline medical staff in Navajo Nation as COVID-19 surged in the region. Photo by Barbara Ries
Archna Eniasivam, MD, a HEAL volunteer working in Navajo Nation, does daily rounds treating residents in the Howard Johnson Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. Photo by Barbara Ries
Brenda Beyal is provided shelter at a hotel so that she could stay isolated from her family until she received her COVID-19 test results. She tested negative and was able to return to her home on the reservation, where she cares for a sick relative. Photo by Barbara Ries
Shea Williams, RN, of UCSF and a HEAL nursing volunteer, talks with a patient in the triage tents set up in front of Gallup Indian Medical Center Emergency Department. The triage team provides local residents with urgent care on a walk-in basis. Photo by Barbara Ries
UCSF volunteers were part of the medical team at the Gallup Indian Medical Center to provide local residents with emergency care on a walk-in basis. Photo by Barbara Ries
Sara Kaiser (left), RN, a HEAL nursing volunteer, consults with Emergency Department nursing assistant Tiffany Watson-Plummer (right) while treating patients admitted through triage at Gallup Indian Medical Center Emergency Department. Photo by Barbara Ries
Toi Gilbert, RN, a HEAL nursing volunteer, dons protective gear for her work with the local team in the ICU at Tsehootsooi Medical Center in Fort Defiance, Arizona. Photo by Barbara Ries
Nancy Terngra (right), a registered nurse from UCSF, works with local team member Deirdre Dominguez (left), RN, at Tsehootsooi Medical Center in Fort Defiance, Arizona. Photo by Barbara Ries
Sara Kaiser, RN, UCSF medical-surgical ICU nurse and a HEAL nursing volunteer, works with the local team treating patients admitted to the Emergency Department through triage at Gallup Indian Medical Center. Photo by Barbara Ries
A tattered flag flies over headstones in the Fort Defiance Veterans Memorial Cemetery near Fort Defiance, Arizona, in Navajo Nation. Photo by Barbara Ries
A view along State Highway 566 northeast of Gallup, New Mexico, on the Navajo reservation. Photo by Barbara Ries
HEAL fellow Natasha Topaha, medical assistant, was raised on the Navajo reservation. She is one of many Dine health care workers who returned after finishing their education and medical training because she wanted help her people. She works with the Mobile Health Program at Tsehootsooi Medical Center, Fort Defiance Indian Health Board Inc., doing drive-up and walk-in COVID-19 testing and traveling clinic work throughout the area. Photo by Barbara Ries
COVID-19 warning signs promote protecting Navajo elders near Window Rock, Arizona, in Navajo Nation. Photo by Barbara Ries
Paula Yazzie oversees a Navajo group of women volunteers designing, cutting and sewing hundreds of medical gowns, masks and hats from donated Tyvek and hospital curtain material to build up the dwindling supply of personal protective equipment for Tsehootsooi Medical Center health care workers. Photo by Barbara Ries
A freight train winds along the desert road from Gallup, New Mexico, near the Navajo Nation reservation. Photo by Barbara Ries
Feature Writing
Ariel Bleicher and Katherine Conrad of UDAR wrote an insightful feature for UCSF Magazine, about UCSF scientists who are learning about COVID-19 and the dizzying array of symptoms that it caused. When the virus first appeared, doctors were watching for fever, cough and shortness of breath. The story, “We Thought It Was Just a Respiratory Virus” is a comprehensive account of how the virus can infect our cells, damage our lungs, invade our hearts, and cause disturbing things to happen to our toes, our guts, even our brains.
Gold
Alumni Relations Pivot
With in-person events canceled due to the pandemic, the Alumni Relations team hosted its first fully virtual program, “Emotional Well-Being During COVID-19 for Health Care Providers” on April 2, 2020. The webinar, which went on to become a nine-week series, was a partnership with the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. The Alumni Relations team launched the series to support the UCSF alumni community’s heightened exposure to the uncertainties of COVID-19 and to help them navigate the unprecedented moment.
Video on a Shoestring
Amid the race for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, UCSF researchers engineered nanobodies called Aeronabs that hold potential to halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, in the human body. To share the news of this work about Aeronabs, the Office of Communications produced an animated video that explained how COVID-19 infects the body and how this molecule would disrupt the spread.
Targeted Constituency Magazines
UCSF Magazine, produced by UDAR, won a CASE award this year with a Winter 2020 edition that looked ahead to the new decade, with some prophetic predictions about the need to address climate change and pandemic preparedness. By the Summer edition, with the pandemic raging, UDAR produced an edition devoted to COVID-19.