Illuminating Health

Nurses Leading the Future of Rural Health

Americans living in rural areas are more likely to die early from cancer, heart disease, and stroke, than those living in urban areas. A key reason for this difference? Limited access to health care. On this episode of Illuminating Health, associate professor Elizabeth Castillo shares how her childhood in California’s San Joaquin Valley shaped her understanding of health care access, inspiring her career path, and discusses why nurses are uniquely equipped to lead efforts to increase primary care access in rural communities.

Gut Feelings: Exploring the Microbiome’s Role in Health and Healing

Associate Professor Cherry Leung and Professor Sandra Weiss are nurse scientists who lead research on the gut microbiome, investigating not only how it impacts human health, but how an understanding of the microbiome can help us treat or even prevent certain health conditions.  On this episode of Illuminating Health, Leung and Weiss discuss their research and its implications for patient care. This engaging conversation covers a range of topics, including the relationship between the gut and adolescent depression, how infant gut bacteria impacts stress regulation, probiotics’ potential to influence emotional well-being, and more.

Care in Community: How Shared Medical Appointments Improve Diabetes Care and Education

About one in 10 Americans have diabetes, a chronic condition that can lead to circulatory, renal and nervous system disorders. The Hispanic population in the United States is disproportionately impacted by diabetes, with Hispanic individuals being 1.5 times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Hispanic whites. Leticia (Lety) Wilke and Kathleen (Katie) Judge, current students in UCSF’s Post Master’s Entry to the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) pathway, are leading efforts to address this inequity by providing diabetes care and education in Spanish for Spanish-speaking patients at their endocrinology clinic. In this episode, Wilke and Judge discuss their work highlighting how an interprofessional team-led shared appointment model of care is effective in advancing diabetes care and education for linguistically diverse patients. The guest host for this episode is Allie Siegel, a student in the school’s BSN Entry to the DNP pathway, Family Nurse Practitioner specialty.

From AI to Virtual Nursing: Leveraging Technology in Nursing Practice

Artificial intelligence, remote health monitoring, virtual nursing – the potential for technology to enhance patient care and the delivery of services is limitless.  Few people know this better than Kay Burke [https://profiles.ucsf.edu/kay.burke], UCSF Health’s chief nursing informatics officer and a current student in the School of Nursing’s Post-Master's Doctor of Nursing Practice pathway [https://nursing.ucsf.edu/admissions/welcome-ucsf-nursing/doctoral-programs/post-masters-entry-dnp-leadership-focus]. In this episode, Burke shares engaging, real-world examples of how she and her team of nurses are leveraging innovative digital tools to improve the lives of UCSF patients and providers, and offers her predictions for what’s next for technology and nursing practice.  The guest host for this episode is Aean Peattie, a student in the school’s Adult-Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist specialty and president of UCSF’s Associated Students of the School of Nursing.

Closing Care Gaps for Pregnant Patients

Despite medical advances, the United States continues to have the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income nation. Additionally, many of our nation’s pregnant individuals and their infants, especially those from low-income and underrepresented groups, do not have access to quality health care during the perinatal period. With an interprofessional team, Andrea Kuster, associate clinical professor, and Tasha Toliver, manager of UCSF Health’s Office of Population Health Outreach Team, are working to change that. In this episode, Kuster and Toliver share about their program that provides comprehensive and individualized health care services to publicly insured pregnant patients in the San Francisco Bay Area. The guest host for this episode is Yari Suarez, a student in the school’s Family Nurse Practitioner specialty.