Outreach Overview

The faculty at the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at the San Francisco General Hospital is committed to advancing orthopaedic care worldwide. Outreach efforts, which include international volunteer missions, provide essential help to underserved countries and helps fill the staggering health care disparity between developing and developed nations by spreading new ideas and technology. Economic globalization has deepened the interdependence of the world?s public health on American medicine. Sixty to eighty percent of the world’s population lacks basic health care, yet eighty percent of the world’s orthopaedists live in the developed world. Trauma, in particular, represents a major worldwide epidemic that underdeveloped countries are ill prepared to address.

Through faculty-sponsored outreach programs and the UCSF orthopaedic surgery residency elective, we hope to foster lifelong spirit of volunteerism in our orthopaedic residents and promote like behavior in other orthopaedic training programs across the United States. By decreasing barriers to volunteerism and encouraging early participation in volunteer activities in our residents and students, our goal is to hope to nurture a culture of physician involvement within the United States orthopaedic community.