Kaiser Permanente San Jose MD honored for aiding San Francisco Tenderloin residents

Dr. James Jang, Cardiology, Kaiser Permanente San Jose, spends his off-hours being the medical “safety net of the safety net” in San Francisco’s often-tough Tenderloin area. For his passionate community service work there, he is one of 12 Kaiser Permanente employees and physicians nationally honored with this year’s prestigious David Lawrence Award for Community Service.

“I’m very grateful and I know the honorarium will help the work in San Francisco’s Tenderloin area,” said Dr. Jang. Lawrence Award winners each receive $10,000 donated to the community organization for which they volunteer.

The Tenderloin is a low-income neighborhood near San Francisco’s upscale Union Square shopping district. For years, residents of the Tenderloin – the homeless, addicted, and poor - have been served by a rescue mission called “City Impact,” where Dr. Jang is now the volunteer Chief Medical Officer.

“I went to one of City Impact’s fundraisers and decided I wanted to do more than just write a check, donate money,” said Dr. Jang. “I wanted to give of myself.”

As a volunteer at City Impact, Dr. Jang sees patients in the clinic and helps solicit donated medical equipment, obtain clinic license, apply for grant awards, and solicit volunteer physicians and nurses to staff the clinic.

City Impact also started an innovative program called “Adopt a Building,” where trained volunteers visit the Tenderloin’s multi-story apartment buildings, filled with dwellings called Single Room Occupancy, or SRO’s, and deliver food or otherwise check up on the welfare of the people who live there.

“That’s where the real needs are, the people living in these one-room, shared bath SRO’s. You don’t see them on the streets of the Tenderloin,” said Dr. Jang.

Dr. Jang wondered: Why not have doctors and nurses take part in these well-being visits as part of the “Adopt-A-Building” program? In that way, professional caregivers could be meeting with tenants, talking about their health needs, getting them clinic appointments and even delivering medications.

“I mean, it’s like house calls. Hardly any doctors make house calls anymore,” Dr. Jang laughed. “But seriously, we’re now seeing people before they have a health emergency, and we can prevent little health issues from becoming big ones if we’re seeing them early.”

Dr. Jang reduced his work hours at Kaiser Permanente to build his idea. He came up with a name, “Home Visit Patient Advocacy Program,” and he was able to get a grant from Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Community Benefit program.

The program now has about 25 volunteer physicians and nurses who make the visits to the residents of the SRO units. They monitor patient conditions, provide medications, or make referrals to some of the Tenderloin free community clinics, he said.

City officials, who called Dr. Jang “the safety net of the safety net,” have promised to support his group, if he can improve the clinic infrastructure which includes a secure Electronic Medical Record System. The free EMR system he is using now is not adequate to support the growth of the clinic, so Dr. Jang is working to replace it. The $10,000 he gets from the Lawrence Award will help.

For more than a decade, the David Lawrence Community Service Award has recognized Kaiser Permanente employees and physicians who champion outstanding volunteer activities and initiatives to improve the health of our communities.

Dr. Jang hopes that the Lawrence award will help him get his Home Visit Patient Advocacy Program noticed and supported as it tries to improve the health of a poor community that struggles amid the wealth and beauty of San Francisco.