Mellissa Withers, PhD, MHS
Associate Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine
Keck School of Medicine of USC
University of Southern California
Director, Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Program
Location: SSB 318G
Telephone: 323 865-0495
Email: mwithers@usc.edu
Mellissa Withers is an associate professor of clinical preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She also directs the global health program for the Association of Pacific Rim Universities.
Her research focuses on global reproductive health and women’s empowerment, including human trafficking, HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning. Other research interests include community participatory research, cultural competency, qualitative methodology, border health and medical anthropology. She has spent several years living and working in developing countries in Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to USC she taught at UCLA in the department of anthropology and other universities including California State University, Los Angles; Occidental College; and UC San Francisco. She also works as an independent qualitative health research consultant.
Withers received a doctorate in community health sciences from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in 2009. She also earned her Master of Health Sciences degree in the health systems management track from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of International Health. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in global development.
Recent:
- A Vicious Cycle: Domestic Abuse, Homelessness, Trafficking (5/31/2018)
- New course takes students to Costa Rica to learn about planetary health, equity (2/16/2018)
- When Perpetrators Are Also Victims (2/1/2018)
- 01/29/18 – Book Launch: Global Perspectives on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Across the Lifecourse (1/16/2018)
- Traditional beliefs and practices in pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum: A review of the evidence from Asian countries (12/8/2017)
- Domestic Violence Victims Kept Silent by Trump’s Policies (11/15/2017)
- Global Perspectives on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Across the Lifecourse (11/9/2017)
- The Under-recognized Victims of Trafficking: Deaf Women (9/21/2017)
- Global health courses go global, live (8/16/2017)
- How the new anti-trafficking bill will help to curb the human trafficking epidemic (8/4/2017)
