Sylvie Sturm, MA

San Francisco Public Press

08/07/2026

End of a Healthcare Revolution: How San Francisco is Unraveling its Groundbreaking Program for...

Listen to the full podcast episode on Civic at sfpublicpress.org. For nearly 60 years, San Francisco built a pioneering system to care for young people in crisis — a network of specialized clinics that combined medical care, mental health treatment, sexual health services and connections to housing and social support under one roof. Now, that model is being dismantled as San Francisco shifts young patients to larger primary care clinics and expands telehealth services.

https://youtu.be/Yd3JOfEYUIs

San Francisco Public Press

05/13/2026

Trauma Inside San Francisco Women's Jail

Listen to the full podcast episode on Civic at sfpublicpress.org. After at least 19 women in San Francisco’s county jail alleged they were subjected to a mass strip search while deputies recorded on body-worn cameras, advocates, attorneys and city officials demanded answers. This investigative documentary examines what women say happened inside the jail’s B-pod — and the broader conditions women describe inside the facility, including prolonged lockdowns, overcrowding, lack of sunlight and...

https://youtu.be/P-R9DPx2TU0

San Francisco Public Press

03/06/2026

Who Decides? Trans Youth, Federal Power and the Battle Over Care

Listen to the full podcast episode on Civic at sfpublicpress.org. Federal policy — through executive orders, funding threats and regulatory pressure — is reshaping access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth across the United States. No new federal law has passed and no final rules have taken effect. Yet hospitals, clinics and families are already making decisions in response to possible federal penalties. Through the story of Eric, a 15-year-old high school student in Oakland, we...

https://youtu.be/jFAFkhyxbN4

San Francisco Public Press

10/09/2025

How Federal Cuts Threaten Research and Lives

Listen to the podcast episode at sfpublicpress.org When federal science budgets are gutted, the fallout reaches far beyond labs. From Alzheimer’s trials at the University of California San Francisco to cancer studies at the Veterans Administration, critical research is stalling, science students are losing opportunities to train and launch careers, and veterans are left without lifesaving care.

https://youtube.com/shorts/wIIpRMw88jA?si=fsXGZQsbfhgx5Lv9

San Francisco Public Press

01/17/2025

A New Aggressive Anti-Abortion Group Was Founded in SanFrancisco

Ever since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, emboldened anti-abortion activists have increased their efforts to shut down abortion access across the country. Some have even resorted to violence. San Francisco stepped up efforts to protect access when voters overwhelmingly supported a ballot measure to support women seeking abortions. That’s in keeping with a long San Francisco tradition of fighting for abortion access going back to the 1960s. In this episode, we take a look at the...

https://youtu.be/wcDpgdvKO_A

San Francisco Public Press

08/13/2025

Fear and Anxiety Mount Amid Social Security Administration Upheaval

Listen to the full podcast episode at sfpublicpress.org. Deep staffing cuts, office closures and new rules are straining the Social Security system, leaving vulnerable residents facing longer waits, lost payments, malfunctioning phone lines and dwindling in-person help. Beneficiaries, advocates and Social Security workers talk about the human consequences of upheaval at an agency more than 100,000 San Franciscans rely on for essential income.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3bFSABbxo

San Francisco Public Press

10/17/2024

Overdose Prevention Centers — Nonstarter in SF, Despite Success in NYC

Previous plans from the San Francisco Public Health Department called for allowing nonprofits to fund safe consumption sites for people grappling with substance use disorders — often associated with fentanyl and other highly addictive opioids — but San Francisco officials have now gone silent on the topic. San Francisco has seen a reduction in drug overdose deaths this year with 462 people dying in the first eight months of 2024. That is still an “alarmingly high” mortality rate and it may...

https://youtube.com/shorts/AMkvLmdZ_E8

San Francisco Public Press

04/10/2024

Overdose Deaths Swell Among SF’s Maya, Highlighting Urgent Need for Culturally Competent Help

A language barrier may be hindering crucial warnings over the dangers of fentanyl for some 70,000 Indigenous Maya-speaking people. The rate of overdose deaths among Maya from the Yucatán living in San Francisco has risen enough since the COVID-19 pandemic to alarm San Francisco’s Mexican Consul General, who processes death certificates of local Mexican nationals before they are repatriated. From January 2020 to December 2023, 2,955 people died of accidental overdose in San Francisco,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPw-iUyylcs

San Francisco Public Press

11/03/2023

The Fight for Safe Consumption Sites: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis

San Francisco is on track to have the highest number of drug overdose deaths in its history. A year ago, I started looking into what led us here, what was helping and what may be making things worse. I've been reporting my findings in a series for the San Francisco Public Press website and Civic podcast and KFSP radio show. In Part 5 of my series, I visit an overdose prevention center in New York City called OnPoint NYC. Executive Director Sam Rivera talked about the transformative effect...

San Francisco Public Press

05/04/2023

Military-Style Drug War in Tenderloin Sparks Fears That More Drug Users Could Overdose

Last week's deployment of the National Guard and California Highway Patrol onto San Francisco's streets to crack down on drugs comes amid intense public pressure to address open air drug use and sales. But the emphasis on law enforcement for addressing the city's drug crisis has distressed public defense attorneys and harm reduction advocates who fear the move may worsen the rate of fatal overdoses.

San Francisco Public Press

04/21/2023

With Overdose Deaths Surging, Critics Chide City, State for Curbing Safe Consumption Centers

San Francisco's chief medical examiner delivered grim statistics last week about a recent increase in deaths related to drug use. In the first three months of the year, 200 people died of accidental overdose. That's up significantly from the first quarter last year, with 142 deaths. These tragedies were disproportionately suffered by marginalized groups.

San Francisco Public Press

06/03/2023

Children Violently Removed by Court Order Resurface and Report Traumatic Experience

It has been seven months since Maya Laing and her brother Sebastian, who were 15 and 11 at the time, were violently taken from their grandmother's Santa Cruz home by court order. Judge Rebecca Connelly, who oversaw their custody case, rejected the siblings' claims that their mother abused them, and last October she ordered them into reunification training to repair their fractured relationship with their mother.

San Francisco Public Press

02/24/2023

Children's Violent Removal From Santa Cruz Home Raises Calls to End Reunification Camps

A video showing the violent removal of two children from a Santa Cruz home has spurred calls to ban a controversial practice that pressures children to recant claims of abuse and embrace their alleged abuser.

San Francisco Public Press

02/17/2023

Family Courts Rely on Dubious Theory to Dismiss Child Abuse Claims

Disbelieving a child's allegation of abuse based on the notion that the other parent brainwashed them into lying is a hotly debated legal tactic called parental alienation. A growing chorus of international media coverage, medical groups and judicial bodies are expressing doubts over the validity of this legal defense tactic and of its practitioners.

San Francisco Public Press

10/10/2022

When Judges Dismiss Claims of Domestic Abuse, Children Can Die

Lawmakers, experts and advocates across California are pushing for legislation that would make judges take regular training in recognizing domestic violence and child abuse. The crusade is an attempt to lessen the chances that a judge will place a child in the custody of a dangerous parent.

San Francisco Public Press

09/12/2022

Coercive Control Victims Face Skeptical Judges, Court Transcripts Show

On average in the U.S., more than 1 in 3 women, and 1 in 4 men, will experience physical violence, rape or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Nevertheless, when victims turn to family court for protection from their abusers, they often face skeptical judges.

San Francisco Public Press

07/11/2022

Laguna Honda Doctors Warned SF of Looming Crisis

Nearly 700 live-in patients at Laguna Honda Hospital were thrown into chaos this spring after a series of damning inspections led the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pull funding and mandate a closure plan for the facility. It's a dire situation for residents of the skilled nursing facility who have specialized needs that make them hard to place elsewhere.

San Francisco Public Press

05/18/2021

Laguna Honda Hospital Has to Self-Destruct to Survive

Administrators are overhauling policies and procedures to regain federal funding that is set to expire following the issuance of multiple damning inspection reports at Laguna Honda Hospital. They have until Sept.

San Francisco Public Press

04/08/2022

Ukrainians in SF Are Anxious and Angry, and Refugees Need Homes

Members of the Ukrainian diaspora in San Francisco are angry, anxious and desperate to connect with loved ones in their ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, a local aid agency is asking for help as refugees begin arriving in the Bay Area.

https://youtu.be/nytQGq2SiDQ

My YouTube Channel

05/17/2020

Imagining Home

Detailing Oakland's POOR Magazine Homefulness Project, a sweat equity, permanent co-housing, education, arts, micro-business and social change project for landless/houseless and formerly houseless families and individuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6MPfsib7MI

San Francisco State University

05/08/2019

Framed: Bay Area Homelessness & Media Coverage

An exhaustive research project reveals some interesting things about the way local media reports on the Bay Area's most pressing problem: homelessness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJCJPLOMwIw

Newsworx

07/06/2018

Surviving HIV Together

The horrendous early years of HIV/AIDS are becoming a distant memory for many. But the men and women who lived through those traumatic times are still healing from the loss of so many loved-ones and from living for years with a death sentence hanging over their heads.

Newsworx

07/20/2018

Multimedia Presentation: Surviving HIV Together

A website depicting four San Franciscans who lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and '90s — as representative of the trauma of long-term HIV survivors — using a 5-minute documentary and statistics tabulated into visual data journalism.

https://youtu.be/ZuNPM2OU-BQ

My YouTube Channel

03/22/019

A Need for Speed

Ever since he was tall enough to reach his first go kart gas pedal, Colorado native Johnathan Foley was hooked. Today, the 28-year-old manages K1 Speed Indoor Go Kart Racing in South San Francisco, and still loves the adrenaline surge he gets from besting other drivers in a test of skill, wits and daring.

Local News Matters

10/30/2018

'A labor of love': Postcard campaign writers seek to increase voter turnout in midterm elections

On a second-floor loft above a raucous bar full of enthusiastic NFL fans in San Francisco's Richmond District, several dozen people sit quietly on barstools around high top tables. Every one of them is hunched over small squares of paper, scribbling furiously, never once glancing at the four screens above them blaring the matchup between the Eagles and the Giants.

Kamloops Daily News

09/09/2013