PhysicIan Honorees

---

Growing up in Los Angeles County, Southern California, in locations from the busy urban streets of Los Angeles to the rural dirt roads of Santa Clarita. Her Pastor father, Medical Technologist mother, and four siblings formed a loving Christian environment, which taught her to trust God in every situation. She excelled in school but felt no specific call to a profession. Her poor economic status gave her no hope for college. Her path changed when a pediatric doctor encouraged her to consider medicine as a career and outlined a plan to make such a dream come true. She attended and graduated from USC, which included a year abroad in France and Tunisia. This was an experience that distracted her from a medical career.

She taught high school in Kenya for seven years as a young adult. She and her husband had three children before their divorce. She returned to California with her three young children and attended medical school with the support of her family. Known for her gift of storytelling, she enjoyed using stories to explain concepts while caring for patients, children’s, and women’s ministries. 

She led medical missions to Kenya. Taking teams of doctors and laypeople to serve many rural underserved areas and establishing or supporting rural clinics. When her children were adults, she answered the call to serve the people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she lived for seven years. She established an orphanage and primary school, which continues to grow. The project also has a training program for widows with small children to earn a living.

From 2009 to 2015, she worked for the WHO as the manager for Patient Safety in the African Region. She lived in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and traveled to many African countries to work with national health departments to develop policies for healthcare workers and hospitalized patients. She also helped support established partnerships between hospitals in England and African countries. In 2015, she retired after spending a year fighting EBOLA in Guinea.

At the request of colleagues and friends, she wrote down some of her favorite experiences to share with others. She included stories about being a single parent, divorced, and engaging people she encountered. A collection of these formed the first book of short stories, Come Walk with Me.

In subsequent novels, she uses many of her personal experiences. Her writings cover her travels and experiences as a single parent raising three children, as well as the challenges she has encountered as a medical doctor and humanitarian around the world. The clear message of her life is that God has consistently been present and active on her behalf at every step of her journey. Because of this assurance, she has lived boldly and achieved remarkable things wherever she has gone.

She is blessed with three loving and accomplished children and five wonderful grandchildren.

Dr. Merritt earned her B.S. in Biology and Spanish at Georgetown University and her M.D. at Howard University. She then trained in family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed a Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

In her practice and as Executive Director of the Multicultural Health Institute (MHI), has had a singular impact in SW Florida through several highly successful initiatives, cultivating an Environmental action coalition over two decades with a variety of community-based participatory research and education projects such as “Know No Bounds,” “EJ Vets Nature and Nurture,” “Environmental Ambassadors” programs, the Sarasota Community Health Guide, the Newtown Health Longitudinal Report, MHI Scholars program, and creation of the Multicultural Action Team (MAT) and Safekeepers of Community Health. 

The daughter of an artist and an engineer, she melds innovation with evidence-based solutions to address community and population health issues. Through collaborative efforts, MHI has touched thousands of lives, working with schools, local communities, and faith-based organizations to educate about health and wellness and promote science, technology, engineering, creative arts, math, and health (STEAMH) careers. 

Dr. Merritt has authored numerous articles and lectures nationally and internationally and has been featured in Fortune Magazine. MHI's work has been recognized by Awards from organizations such as the AMA, AAPMR, NMA, Designing Women, National Council of Jewish Women, Howard Club, and NAACP.

In her volunteer work, I've enjoyed working with/providing mentorship to children whose needs are consistently overlooked. I've also engaged in farm work and food justice projects that served our unhoused neighbors in Oakland. 

Lastly, in my pursuit of a career in medicine, while I'm unsure of my specialty, I know that the populations I want to serve are those whose rights to health care have been systematically limited. I want to continue serving these marginalized communities that I'm a part of and work towards a future of liberation healthcare, not just health "equity."

Hometown: Pinole Ca

Undergrad: UCLA, Class of  2020

Specialty interests: Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Interventional Cardiology, General Surgery, and Critical Care Cardiology