Roberto Ariel Vargas, MPH, is a Navigator for the Community Engagement and Health Policy program (CE & HP) at CTSI.
How long have you worked at UCSF?
I've worked at UCSF for about 9 years. I started by co-teaching the Community Oriented Primary Care curriculum with a faculty physician in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. This gave me my first opportunities to share with UCSF learners thoughts about how individual physicians can play a role in community health, by partnering with community folks to assess needs, identify resources, and collaboratively work for change - in partnership. At that time, I was directing a collaborative of non-profits, and partnerships with the SFUSD and SFDPH to serve at-risk youth at the Real Alternatives Program High School, serving mostly Mission and Bayview kids.
What do you do at UCSF and how is it connected to the UCSF mission?
Since I started here, I've worked to develop community-university partnerships. For the first five years, my focus was on building partnerships in general, with a focus on the School of Medicine and the southeast neighborhoods of SF. I had opportunities to build partnerships between organizations focused on workforce development and the university, to strengthen pathways to employment; build health education partnerships between community-based organizations and faculty and students. Most of my time was spent building partnerships to strengthen community and UCSF capacity to prevent violence and treat victims of violence. For example, I worked with a series of third year medical students to develop -- in partnership -- resource guides for families impacted by violent injury, and for families impacted by homicide. We partnered with the SFDPH to design, implement and evaluate a "Healing the Healers" series to build community-based capacity to identify and prevent vicarious trauma and burn-out among frontline workers who are providing critical support for individuals and families impacted by violence. In this work, I was able to leverage my experiences and networks in community-based violence intervention and prevention work. Prior to coming to UCSF I was engaged in peace work in many ways, from organizing peace treaties between conflicting youth gangs to strategically aligning organizations to provide wraparound services for young people living in risk, to teaching poetry and art workshops in juvenile detention facilities.
In the last several years, I've been working for the Community Engagement and Health Policy program, working to build institutional partnerships between UCSF and the SFDPH, Stanford University, the SF Hospital Council, and others.
I still spend a great deal of time building partnership with communities, but now more for improving nutrition and increasing physical activity-- obesity related disease prevention. Much of this work is focused at the community level in the Bayview Hunters Point, where I've lived the most of the last 24 years. I've also spent much more time these days at City Hall as part of our efforts to develop policy that reduces obesity.
What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of your job?
The most challenging part is balancing parenting, community work and an increasingly heavy workload. But I signed up for all those things, with great zeal! The most rewarding parts of my job include being able to work for healthy change in the community I live in and love, and I love that I am always learning. I've learned so much about research, metabolic disease, applying science and research expertise to community health. I also really enjoy teaching; working with the brightest medical students and post-doctoral learners is fun, and challenging.
What do you like most about your work at CTSI / Community Engagement & Health Policy?
Increasingly, I'm spending a great deal of time on policy work to increase consumption of drinking water, and to support reducting consumption of sugary drinks. On behalf of our San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership (SFHIP), I was tasked with convening a coalition of policymakers, scientists, public health planners and community-based health advocates. I had tremendous help from my SF Department of Public Health colleagues. This effort has been an amazing learning experience-- learning about the politics and science of health policy development. After more than a year of working on this issue, policymakers announced this week that two approaches to a Soda Tax policy are being proposed for the November 2014 ballot. We've been learning about what it takes to educate communities through public awareness campaigns. Along these lines, it looks like I may have new opportunities to engage in policy work with Nicaragua, which is really exciting to me. Diabetes is the second leading cause of death there, and I think we can share some lessons for how to deal with that. Of course, I want them to teach us a few things-- like how to communicate health information to Central American families we work with here, for example.
What are some things that people may not know about the work you do?
Honestly, I feel like only the people who work closest to me even know about the work I do! I think what might be most surprising are the contrasts: on one day I am working in the Bayview, meeting with community leaders to plan and advocate for improved transportation to get folks to their health appointments, or to be able to access better food in a community known to some as a food "swamp", or "desert". I'm there as a peer-- a community resident lending my perspective, and leveraging the resources of the university-- not as a visitor in a community where poverty, diabetes, and violence pervade. The next day, I'm facilitating a meeting between world renown scientists and politicians who are at the cutting edge of food access policy, with public health advocates who are leading world class initiatives to reduce obesity, all in the impressive offices of City Hall. Often, I am the meeting facilitator. And unless you are in those meetings, you wouldn't know my role even exists.
If you chose another career path outside UCSF what would it be?
I've been a teacher before, but unfortunately we don't invest enough in public schools, and I got frustrated with the lack of support for teachers. But I still love teaching. So, i can see myself doing that more, but not necessarily in the classroom.
There are a couple businesses I'd be interested in, like leading historical tours. I love sharing learning and sharing history, and one of the things I get to do with UCSF learners is lead them on tours to learn about community history, community health assessment, and about community university partnerships.
Staying on my same path, but outside the university, I could really enjoy international health policy work. I had an opportunity to engage in a project where we collaborated with SF policymakers to send a humanitarian grant of SF tax dollars to NIcaragua to build a water infrastructure in a remote town on the border between Honduras and NIcaragua. I got to travel to a remote jungle on a small plane and a small boat, and was awed by the hospitality and generosity of spirit of people who have so little- materially. It seemed we have so much to offer -- again, materially -- if only we could go back again. And I'm sure they had plenty to teach us, if only we had time to learn. That was several years back, to help victims of Hurricane Felix. I love to travel and to serve others, and doing that for a living would be amazing.
What's something that your colleagues or members of the UCSF community might be surprised to know about you?
My family and I have done Aztec dance for more than 20 years. These are traditions that have been handed down generation to generation. My teacher and her teacher learned from their grandparents, and they are very strict about us following ritual and dance steps the way they were handed down, so I know they've stayed the same for at least the last 150 years. I'm guessing these traditions are much older, as our elders tell us. These traditions ground me, and my elders humble me. I've learned prayers and songs in Nahuatl -- a native language of this continent. On Sunday, I might be singing songs in the sweat lodge, or dancing in my regalia with full "headdress". On Monday, I'll be in the Bayview, working with community health advocates, and later at City Hall, meeting with VIPs. Thankfully, I've learned enough to know that we are all important, and all related.
What are your favorite things to do with your free time?
I love riding my bicycle through the City with my 11 year old daughter, or skateboarding through the Mission with my 13 year old son. I love salsa dancing with my wife. I am a voracious reader.
CTSI Spotlight is part of an ongoing series that offers an opportunity for faculty and staff to learn more about the wide range of people who make CTSI's work possible. See all featured faculty and staff.