How UCSF Pharmacy Students Advance Community Health on Their Own Time

To honor Graduate Student Appreciation Week,⁸ we’re zooming in on the dedicated learners at the UCSF School of Pharmacy who volunteer for student-led initiatives, amplifying and exemplifying UCSF’s values⁹ while making a tangible health impact on local communities. 

UCSF is home to many registered campus organizations that offer students a range of opportunities to cultivate leadership and gain invaluable hands-on experience, extending the school’s mission to expand knowledge and improve the health outcomes of people everywhere. 

Through hands-on workshops, direct community service, and health care-focused outreach, these initiatives enable students to refine their clinical and communication skills, deepen their understanding of patient-centered approaches to health care, and demonstrate the vital role that pharmacists play — while preparing them to improve public health in the evolving landscape of health care. 

SNPhA at the Haight Ashbury Food Pantry 

On Feb. 15, 2025, the UCSF chapter of the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA)¹⁰ hosted its annual volunteer event at the Haight Ashbury Food Pantry (HAFP), helping to combat food insecurity in San Francisco by spending a chilly Saturday morning  organizing, sorting, packaging, and distributing free food. 

The student volunteers showed up to support the mission of HAFP, which was founded in 1983 to offer food and referral services to individuals in need while fostering a sense of community for all. 

Janeene Yeh, a PharmD candidate in the Class of 2026 and SNPhA’s secretary, said that “spots fill up really fast” for the HAFP event with volunteers eager to give back to their hyperlocal community.

“This reminds me of when I used to do food bank distribution and volunteering back in my college town at UC Davis. It was such a rewarding experience, giving food to people who need it,” said Arti Naik, a PharmD candidate in the Class of 2027 who picked up an early shift at the Food Pantry. “As a nutrition major, it was something that really resonated with me, and now it’s a great reminder of what I’m doing and why I’m here, serving the underserved.” 

SNPhA plans, organizes, coordinates and executes programs throughout the year geared toward improving the health, educational and social environment of medically underserved communities. 

Yeh said she appreciated the opportunity to practice Cantonese with some of the pantry’s elderly Asian customers. 

“Being able to communicate effectively with different populations is a useful skill to translate into my future practice as a pharmacist,” she said. “Being able to help them the best way I can by breaking those language barriers is really important to me.” 

Nurture Her supports unhoused women 

On March 8, 2025, in recognition of International Women's Day, a new graduate student-led grassroots organization called Nurture Her hosted “Rights and Resilience” to provide crucial resources to women facing homelessness.

Co-founded by Alexandria Lapan and her fellow PharmD candidates in the Class of 2026 Alayna Dornton and Alexa Orosz, Nurture Her began with the goal of distributing emergency contraception. They kicked off a GoFundMe to seed the project, and it was so successful that they began brainstorming ways to expand the effort. 

To add to the supplies and facilitate distribution, the group partnered with the Pharmacy Homeless Clinic, a UCSF student-run free pharmacy clinic that provides medical aid and harm-reduction services at the St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Francisco. 

Volunteers at the Nurture Her event assembled and distributed over 100 care bags containing fentanyl test strips, Narcan, condoms, menstrual pads, and educational materials about menstrual health, in addition to emergency contraception. 

The event also featured two guest speakers: School of Medicine Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Katrina Kimport, PhD, who discussed reproductive health care advocacy and how students can get involved, and Women’s Health Clinical Pharmacist Kristin Harter, PharmD, an associate clinical professor who provided clinical insights into the reproductive health needs of unhoused populations.

“One of our big goals was to keep education through all that we do,” said Lapan. “Whether we’re giving back through a big event, or on a one-on-one patient level, there's always space for you to make an impact in somebody’s life. Individual interactions and having that human connection can be so incredibly important, to inspire your patients to continue their health journey…. Knowledge is power.” 

By taking the initiative to launch Nurture Her, Lapan said she gained new skills and confidence that reinforced the importance of compassionate, community-driven pharmacy practice.  

“When we first started, we weren't sure how to do any of it — how to reach out to people, how to get connected to speakers, or even getting the supplies that we needed,” she said. “If we didn't just try, it never would have happened, and we never would have connected this community.” 

ENVISION and COSA’s healthy heart blood pressure workshop 

Grad student volunteers teamed up to model the professional skills of a pharmacist on March 26, 2025, at an annual workshop coproduced by ENVISION¹¹, a career exploration internship program in partnership with the UCSF Department of Neurosurgery and the non-profit organization Oasis for Girls, which exposes high school students  in San Francisco to careers in medicine and health-science fields. 

As part of its Project Healthy Heart initiative, pharmacy students with the Community Outreach Student Alliance (COSA)¹², a School of Pharmacy umbrella organization that plans large-scale health fairs and population-specific outreach events, educated the high schoolers on how to prevent and manage common heart diseases by understanding key health metrics that pharmacists typically evaluate in patients.

The students provided both manual and automatic blood pressure machines for a hands-on lesson in how to take accurate blood pressure readings, while also teaching participants about the importance of heart health. 

PharmD candidate in the Class of 2026 Joanna Feng led the session, reminding the young attendees that “they only have one heart, so be sure to take care of it.” 

She shared the podium with grad student volunteers from the American Association of Psychiatric Pharmacists Collegiate Chapter, who offered training in mindfulness and breathing techniques. 

Laura Huang, a project coordinator for Project Healthy Heart who chose the role because of her family’s history with hypertension, said the effort adds an extra layer of experience with patient interaction to the PharmD curriculum. 

“Patients may not understand why high blood pressure can be dangerous. You need to make sure it's under control before it progresses to a more severe state, such as heart disease, heart attack, or stroke,” she said. “Project Healthy Heart helps us learn more about how to be a good pharmacist. We have preceptors there teaching us how to counsel patients on lifestyle and to look through their medication list to see what’s appropriate for them.”