Serve the People: How San Francisco Chinese Hospital Transformed the Delivery of Healthcare Services to the Chinese Community, 1960s - 1980s

Faculty: Katherine Lee

American Multicultural Studies

College of Education, Counseling, and Ethnic Studies

This research project examines the overlooked history of how the doctors and staff at San Francisco Chinese Hospital in the 1970s and 1980s delivered state-of-the-art healthcare to Chinatown and Chinese communities in San Francisco at a time when these services were not widely available to poor and working-class Chinese individuals. This project shows how the forms of grassroots activism that emerged within Chinese Hospital during this time period both transformed the delivery and affordability of healthcare services to the local population and led to the creation of a groundbreaking health plan model that would later be used across the nation.