Schedule

Shore Room

Speaker: Ana Minian, PhD (Ana Raquel Minian | Historian)

Dr. Minian is a Stanford historian of immigration, detention, and Latinx history whose work centers the lived experiences of migrants within systems of enforcement and exclusion. Their award-winning book Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration reshapes how we understand migration by foregrounding the deeply human realities of undocumented life. Their work speaks directly to this year’s theme by illuminating how systems of crisis are historically produced, how they are lived at the individual level, and what it means to provide care within structures that often deny safety, stability, and rights.

Title: Immigration Enforcement, Detention, Asylum, and Impacts on Mental Health
Leads: Shruti Rajan, MD/ Brendan Scherer, MD

Panel Overview: This panel explores the intersection of immigration enforcement, detention, and asylum processes with mental health outcomes. Panelists will discuss systemic challenges, clinical considerations, and the impact of legal processes on behavioral health.

Panelists:

• Leigh Kimberg, MD – UCSF Professor and Interpersonal Violence Prevention Lead
• Shira Levine, JD – Immigration Institute of the Bay Area & SF Immigration Judge
• Lisette Carmona, PA-C – USC Street Medicine clinician

Title: How Policy Shapes Care – The Language of Laws
Lead: Dr. Tasha Souter - San Mateo County Medical Director

Panel Overview: Exploring how legislation and policy - particularly SB43, MHSA → BHSA transitions, and CalAIM integration - affect clinical practice and community outcomes with specific focus on San Mateo County.

Panelists:

• Alex Hagnere, LCSW – BHRS Clinical Services Manager and SB43 Oversight Lead
• Jei Africa, PsyD, MSCP – Director of San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS)
• Amy Davidson, MSW – Director of the San Mateo County Department of Housing and lead on homelessness initiatives

Come Enjoy!

1. Resident posters/projects displayed in the breakout room
2. Sandwiches/snacks/drinks served
3. Pet therapy, service animal - Canine Companions
4. OMT Medical Student leading a “Healthy Corner"
5. Documentary on Untold Voices of Psychosis: Voices in the background

Title: Loneliness – Mental Health Crisis
Lead: Tamara Meidav, MD (UCSF Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)

Panel Overview: Examining loneliness as a major public health issue impacting mental health and addiction. Panelists will discuss clinical and systemic dimensions, including stigma, isolation, housing insecurity, and access to supportive community spaces. Strategies for intervention such as peer support, group-based care, harm reduction, recovery communities, and social prescribing will be explored.

Panelists:

• Tanya Ngo, MD – San Mateo Psychiatry PGY-3 Resident and 2027 UCSD Child Psych Fellow
• Maria Lorente Foresti, PhD – BHRS Health Equity Initiative
• Carla Perissinotto, MD, MHS – UCSF Professor and Researcher on loneliness
• Barbara Weissman, MD – San Mateo BHRS Oasis Geriatric Psychiatrist
• Ashwin Kotwal, MD, MS – UCSF Associate Professor, Division of Geriatrics

Title: Meeting Patients Where They Are – Community-Based MAT from First Response to Recovery
Lead: Mary Taylor Fullerton, San Mateo Clinical Services Manager II - Mental Health

Panel Overview: Highlights an innovative collaboration between AMS and BHRS to bring medication for addiction treatment (MAT) directly into the community. Panelists will discuss development, historical context, operational workflows, interagency collaboration, and strategies to link patients to ongoing care.

Panelists:

• Kelly McGinty – AMR Response Personnel
• Chris King – Street Medicine / Mobile Clinic representative
• Evan Bernard – AMR Response Personnel      

Speaker: Helena Hansen, MD, PhD (website: Helena Hansen) 

Dr. Hansen is a psychiatrist and anthropologist whose work examines how systems—policy, race, and economics—shape mental health and addiction care. Beyond this, her broader work in addiction medicine and social psychiatry highlights how treatment systems themselves are embedded within and often reproduce these inequities. She challenges clinicians to recognize how categories like “risk,” “compliance,” and even “care” are shaped by larger political and economic contexts.Her book, Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America, explores how structural forces redefine who is seen as deserving of care and how crises are constructed. Her perspective challenges us to think more critically about the systems we practice within.