Dr. Melissa Morgan is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology at UCSF. She focuses on clinical implementation research to inform the development of health policies for neonates in low- and middle-income countries. She earned a M.Sc. in Global Health Science from University of Oxford. She received her M.D. at University of Texas Houston then completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowship in neonatology at UCSF.

Her neonatology fellowship research aimed to determine the prevalence of hypoxemia and its association with inpatient mortality among clinically ill term and preterm neonates, and to measure the efficacy of training hospital staff to provide tailored oxygen therapy to sick newborns at Pumwani Hospital, the largest maternity facility in Nairobi. In December 2013, Dr. Morgan received a UCSF Resource Allocation Program Global Health Policy Award to support this study. The first phase of the study was published in Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed, and the second phase is in press at J Pediatr Child Health (as of Aug 2017).

Since 2014, Dr. Morgan has been a Co-Investigator on a study in collaboration with PRONTO International, an organization that provides simulation-based neonatal and obstetric emergency training in low resource settings. In collaboration with Care India and with funding from the Gates Foundation, training curricula were implemented at 320 primary health clinics and 56 district hospitals in Bihar, India over 24 months between 2015 and 2017. Efficacy was measured through the use of video monitoring, a mobile application, pre/post knowledge assessments, and focus groups and interviews with key stakeholders. The first manuscript from this study was published in BMC Preg Childbirth in 2017, and additional papers are submitted or in preparation.

From July 2015 to June 2017, Dr. Morgan was a member of the inaugural cohort of UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) Post-Doctoral Fellows. With the support of PTBi, Dr. Morgan is currently pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine under the mentorship of Joy Lawn and Elizabeth Allen. She investigated the feasibility and acceptability of kangaroo mother care among clinically unstable neonates weighing 2000 grams or less at Jinja Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda, and she is developing a clinical scoring system to help providers in low-resource settings determine which unstable neonates are eligible for KMC.