Oakland families are once again feeling the strain of a healthcare decision made far from their neighborhood, as UC San Francisco continues shifting critical pediatric services out of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and into facilities across the bay. A year into UCSF’s oversight of the former Children’s Hospital Oakland, the consequences are landing squarely on the shoulders of East Bay families already stretched thin by illness, financial hardship and logistical hurdles.
As a clinical social worker who supports children battling sickle cell disease, cancer and other serious conditions, I see firsthand how these families cope with fear, uncertainty and the daily grind of caring for a sick child. Now they face an added burden: getting to San Francisco for treatments that used to be available just down the street in Oakland.
Parents of immunocompromised kids — children who are supposed to avoid unnecessary exposure to illness — are being told to hail Ubers and cross the bridge for care. Many are forced into impossible choices, torn between sitting at a child’s bedside in San Francisco or staying home in the East Bay to work or care for other children.
For generations, the Oakland hospital has served as a lifeline for this community. Recently, I stood alongside patients, families, elected officials and more than 100 fellow hospital workers at a rally urging UCSF to keep these essential services in Oakland, where they belong.
This hospital serves a large share of low-income, immigrant and undocumented families, along with many children covered by Medi-Cal. It’s one of only five Level 1 pediatric trauma centers in the entire state, and for families throughout Alameda County, it has long been the place to turn when a child needs specialized, close-to-home care.
Yet since UCSF assumed control, workers and families have watched key services — bone marrow transplant care, interventional radiology, specialty diagnostic testing — relocate to UCSF’s San Francisco campuses.
One patient I currently support had spent years building trust with their care team in Oakland. That relationship was upended when UCSF shifted their treatment to Mission Bay, requiring the family to navigate an unfamiliar transplant team across the bridge.
Now, the patient’s caregiver must arrange Uber rides before dawn, manage fasting requirements, and rearrange work and family obligations for every single appointment. And if complications arise after the transplant, the family has been instructed to first go to the Oakland emergency room — only to be transferred to San Francisco if hospitalization is needed, right in the middle of a medical emergency.
These decisions, made in UCSF boardrooms, carry troubling racial justice implications as well. Sickle cell disease disproportionately affects Black patients, and Oakland’s Black families have depended on this hospital for decades of trusted, culturally competent care. Shifting services away from Oakland only deepens long-standing inequities and sends a discouraging message about who the health system truly prioritizes.
Why should East Bay families have to travel across the bay for specialized pediatric care that has historically been rooted in their own community?
UCSF certainly has the resources to choose a different path. The university has poured billions into expansion projects, real estate acquisitions and San Francisco-focused priorities. It cannot simultaneously argue that Oakland’s children must accept diminished access, thinner staffing and disjointed care while investing so heavily elsewhere.
In 2020, Alameda County voters overwhelmingly passed a half-cent sales tax specifically to support children’s healthcare — funding meant to bolster staffing, equipment and pediatric programs tied to the Oakland children’s hospital. As services continue moving away from the very community that tax was designed to serve, residents deserve far more transparency about how those Measure C dollars are actually being spent.
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland must remain the anchor of pediatric care for Oakland, Alameda County and the broader East Bay. UCSF needs to halt the migration of critical services, restore specialized care to the Oakland campus, and sit down directly with the workers and families affected. We are the ones standing beside these patients through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
Children and their families shouldn’t have to overcome additional barriers just to receive life-saving treatment. But piece by piece, decision by decision, that safety net is being pulled away.
Original source: CalMatters
