Marlene M. Email & Phone Number

I am a leader, innovator, advocate, community collaborator, and physician dedicated to systems improvement in the safety net. I am board certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine and founding director of UCSF @ San Francisco General's Addiction Care Team (ACT). I am passionate about equity, advocacy, community partnerships, cultural and language concordant care and innovation, care transitions, and increasing the diversity of the healthcare workforce.ACT is a hospital-based interprofessional consult service that provides harm reduction, evidence-based treatment, and linkage to care for patients with unhealthy substance use. I raised over $4M to pilot and maintain ACT services and obtained sustainable funding from the Department of Public Health. In addition to clinical care, ACT educates healthcare workers and trainees, advocates for change, and implements and evaluates quality improvement projects.As the physician lead of Comunidad Contra COVID between 2020-2021 I led a collaboration between the UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence and two Latinx CBOs, Mission Economic Development Agency and Dolores Street Community Services, in partnership with the SFDPH. We developed a language and culturally concordant promotora (community health worker) model of COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing plus wrap around services for monolingual Spanish speaking individuals in San Francisco. We trained and equipped 20 promotoras who served over 1,400 individuals. In 2021, the SFDPH funded the CBOs to form a Latine community health worker academy, where I provided technical support through 2023. The California Senate District 11 awarded us the COVID-19 Heroes Award and our work also received recognition at the 2022 American Public Health Association. As the Director of Addiction Initiatives for the UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence since 2021, I have partnered with Latine-serving CBOs to co-develop, pilot, and evaluate PEDAL (Program for Education in Drugs and Alcohol for Latine). PEDAL is a Spanish-based CHW Education Program aimed at empowering CHW/promotoras to discuss, identify, and refer people with unhealthy substance use to San Francisco Services.