Dr. Meffort received her Bachelor’s Degree and a Masters in Religion from Stanford University, obtained her MD degree at the University of Iowa, and then obtained her MPH in International Health at Harvard University. She won numerous honors and awards during her studies, including a Stanford undergraduate research grant, a Stanford University Howard M. Garfield Award for academic achievement, and a nomination for the Rock Sleyster Scholar Psychiatry Award.
Prior to her entry in the residency, she conducted extensive field of work in medical NGO relief work in a number of countries around the world, including North India and Tibet, Haiti, Russian and Sudan.
At UCSF, she chose to work with Dr. Charles Marmar and developed a protocol in which she assessed the psychiatric needs of Sudanese refugees in Chad and the efficacy of a brief narrative exposure therapy on reducing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The training program funded her site visit to the proposed areas of investigation, as well as forged collaborations that were necessary for this work to progress. In 2007, Dr. Meffert received the Outstanding Creative Research Resident Award from UCSF for her research activities and was accepted into the UCSF Global Health Scholars’ Program (GHSP). She was recently honored as the GHSP Burke Faculty Scholar. Dr. Meffert currently serves as Medical Director of the Program in Refugee Trauma at Harvard University.
She has published seven articles and one book chapter to date, and she has presented at annual meetings of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Conference, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy for Psychiatry and the Law.