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Dr. Melissa Morgan is a Clinical Fellow in Neonatology and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Preterm Birth at UCSF. Her long-term career goal is to perform implementation research that will 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 at UCSF as a participant in the UCSF Global Health Clinical Scholars Program and the Pediatric Critical Care Track. During residency, she received the CTSI Resident Research Funding Award to conduct research on clinical predictors of neonatal sepsis and universal screening with transcutaneous bilimeters at Vivekananda Memorial Hospital in Saragur, India.

In July 2013, Dr. Morgan started fellowship training in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at UCSF. Her fellowship research aims to determine the prevalence of hypoxemia and its association with inpatient mortality and duration of hospitalization 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.

In spring 2014, Dr. Morgan began working as a Co-Investigator with PRONTO International, a non-profit 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 will be implemented at 320 primary health clinics and 56 district hospitals in Bihar, India over 24 months beginning in March 2015. Efficacy will be measured through the use of video monitoring, a mobile application, pre/post knowledge assessments, and focus groups and interviews with key stakeholders.

Dr. Morgan was selected as a Member of the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) Global Implementation Working Group in July 2014, and this experience solidified her desire to explore interventions to reduce the burden of preterm birth in the postnatal period. In July 2015, she joined the inaugural cohort of the UCSF PTBi Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Preterm Birth. With the support of GHS and PTBi, Dr. Morgan commenced the PhD program at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the mentorship of Joy Lawn and Elizabeth Allen. She will investigate the effect of kangaroo mother care initiated in the first 24 hours of life on mortality in clinically unstable preterm and low birth weight infants at Jinja Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda.