In this newsletter:

  • How do your donations drive solutions?
  • Improving Air Quality with Environmental Justice Communities
  • Tips to Protect Your Family While Cooking this Holiday Season
  • Honoring Karen Pierce—A Leader, Partner, and Champion

DECEMBER 2025

Dear Friends,

Your donations drive solutions. We do a lot with a small budget of only $300,000 to move our world toward a healthier climate, to prevent nuclear annihilation, and to safeguard and strengthen democracy. Our super power is that SF Bay PSR combines the knowledge and credibility of health professionals with community activism.

Please consider an end-of-year DONATION here. We’re raising $25,000 to start 2026 strong, and every dollar will be put to work right away.

So, how do your donations drive solutions?

Our Air Pollution and Building Electrification Program is just one example. The Bay Area has the sixth worst air pollution in the country. Our buildings are one of the top three sources of air pollution, alongside industry and transportation. And our gas water and space heaters produce more NOx pollution than our passenger cars. Air pollution harms the entire body contributing not just to asthma and respiratory diseases, but also to neurological, cardiovascular, dermatological issues, and even premature death. Children, elders, and lower-income and communities of color are especially vulnerable to these health harms.

To address this problem:

      • We first listen to and build collaborative partnerships with EJ community organizations, participate in strategic coalitions and in studies.
      • Then our BE team, which includes staff and health professional volunteers, regularly collects and reviews public policy information, and medical and scientific studies.
      • We take this complicated information and use it to support community outreach and mobilize policy change toward the goal of improving our air quality and thus health and climate outcomes. We do this by creating:
        • Newsletters to help our busy health professional members quickly digest complicated policy and health information and take action.
        • Toolkits for our community-based members. They often do not have the staff or time to understand medical studies—we provide them with the info they need to easily communicate with their members.
        • Talking points for health professionals and advocates to use when giving public comment, writing op-eds, or visiting city or state policy makers.
        • Presentations and tabling events where our health professional members, staff, and interns listen to community members, share information, and support their questions and concerns.

Just this week, we mobilized health professionals to give public comment at the Bay Area Air District in support of life-saving new rules to phase in cleaner, healthier electric home water and space heating/heat pumps. Our staff made it easy for health professionals to take action—and Air District board members have told us that our health voices are some of the most influential on their decision making.

JOIN our advocacy efforts, email info@sfbaypsr.org.

three doctors standing in their white coats

Your gifts made this possible!

$100 provides educational resources for one community event.
$250 organizes talking points for health advocates.
$1,000 funds two months of early-career internship wages.
$2,500 supports a full advocacy campaign.
$5,000 funds four months of communications for 3,500 members.

Read our 2025 Accomplishments Report to see more impacts of your gifts!

If you prefer, you can mail a check to SF Bay PSR, 548 Market Street, #90725, San Francisco, CA 94104. SF Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Federal Tax ID: #94-2702750

We also accept Donor Advised Funds through our secure online and easy-to-use form.
Questions? Please email Executive Director Marj Plumb at director@sfbaypsr.org.

Please make a DONATE here! THANK YOU!

Improving Air Quality with Environmental Justice Communities

This past year, in addition to supporting the Air District’s ZE appliance rules, SF Bay PSR worked with the SF Environment Department and Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates to install clean, electric appliances at The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (The NABE), a nonprofit community and child-care center. We also partnered with the SF Climate Equity Hub to provide multilingual education on the health harms of air pollution and gas stoves. We hosted an event on Neurological Associations with Air Pollution and Health Benefits of Building Electrification. And today, we want to tell you more about how we are supporting the California Air Resources Board (CARB) indoor air pollution standards including a new partnership with UCLA to study indoor air pollution in lower-income homes. 

SF Bay PSR is partnering on two indoor air quality projects in collaboration with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

Did you know that California has a report called “Indoor Air Pollution in California,” created by CARB? This report has the potential to serve as a strong source of scientific information on indoor air pollution, influencing policy and health protocols in California. Unfortunately, the report has not been updated since 2005. With all the changes to our social, political, and environmental climate in the last 20 years this report is due for an upgrade! As a result, CARB, in collaboration with UCLA, has begun the process of gathering public opinion and insight on the topic of indoor air quality. SF Bay PSR has been supporting this project by participating in collecting feedback from the public through hosting individual air quality interviews with residents all over California.

Our team supported the indoor air quality interviews by recruiting residents, business owners, and community leaders in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco and in Richmond, CA. These two communities have a deeply rooted connection to the struggle for environmental justice. Community members were able to provide insight on the topic of indoor air quality and their own experiences with indoor air quality to the UCLA interviewers to influence the update of the indoor air quality report.

The interviews concluded in July 2025, and in November a public virtual workshop was held by UCLA to gain further insight from a larger sample of residents throughout the state. SF Bay PSR will have other opportunities to provide feedback on the report during its development. With this opportunity, we hope to ensure the report is representative of environmental justice communities.

Our next research project with UCLA and principal investigator Dr. Jing Li, the RESPECT Study, also funded by CARB, includes SF Bay PSR as a co-principal investigator and will include field research on indoor air quality for residents in Bay Area, Central California, and Los Angeles communities that are designated as having some of the worst air pollution and environmental injustice in the state. The SF Bay PSR team will lead in recruiting Bay Area participants for the study. In addition, our staff will be conducting home visits to test for indoor air pollutants coming from gas appliances in participant homes. Keep an eye out for calls for participation if you would like to take part in the study or know community members who might be interested!

For more information about either of these studies please email:
SF Bay PSR Environmental Justice Policy Associate
Bailey Ward, MPH at bailey@sfbaypsr.org

Tips to Protect Your Family While Cooking this Holiday Season

These resources are designed to be used as references and shared widely!
Print these out to post on your fridge!

Please find an extensive list of building electrification resources here.

pumpkin pie
Karen Pierce

Honoring Karen Pierce: A Leader, Partner, and Champion of Bayview Hunters Point

By Marj Plumb, DrPH, SF Bay PSR Executive Director

San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility joins our partners and friends across the Bayview Hunters Point community in mourning the recent passing of Karen Pierce, founder of Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates and a force of nature in environmental justice. Karen led with a mix of clarity, courage, and compassion that made our communities and city stronger.

For more than two decades, Karen worked alongside SF Bay PSR and health professionals to advance environmental health, protect residents from toxic exposures, and insist—consistently, persistently, and effectively—that communities deserve clean air, safe homes, and a real voice in decisions shaping their lives. Her leadership was integral to the long arc of collaboration between the Advocates and SF Bay PSR, from advocacy campaigns to hands-on community health projects.

Most recently, Karen partnered with us on the NABE building-electrification project, replacing polluting gas appliances to cut asthma-triggering indoor air contaminants and model clean, community-centered energy solutions in Bayview Hunters Point.

Anyone who worked with Karen knew she did not suffer fools—whether they were government officials dragging their feet or well-meaning outsiders misunderstanding community needs. She called out fools firmly, directly, and with a moral clarity. And just as powerfully, Karen welcomed people back into partnership when they showed understanding and a genuine desire to do better. Her integrity demanded accountability, and her commitment to community made space for growth. That combination was part of what made her such an extraordinary leader.

Across more than twenty years, Karen became not only a treasured colleague but a true friend—one who taught me humility in community work: directly, honestly, and with deep care. I am the leader I am today because she wasn’t afraid to challenge me, to expect that I could grow, and she always welcomed me back when I did.

We extend our deepest sympathy to Karen’s family and to the community she loved and fought for every day. Her legacy lives on not only in the countless people she influenced, but also in the ongoing work of the Advocates under the leadership of her daughter and current Executive Director, Michelle Pierce. We remain committed to standing with Michelle and the Advocates as we carry forward the vision Karen championed so fiercely.

Karen leaves behind a profound legacy—and, in classic Karen fashion, a clear directive: keep going, keep pushing, and keep the community at the center of the work. We will.