Nicky Mehtani
Postdoctoral Fellow - Neuroscape
Address:
UCSF – Mission BaySandler Neuroscience CenterMC 0444, 675 Nelson Rising LaneSan Francisco, CA 94158
Email:
Biography:
Nicky Mehtani is a board-certified addiction medicine and HIV physician with research interests focused on understanding the use of psychedelics in the treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs). She completed medical school, MPH studies, and internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD before returning home to the Bay Area in 2019 to pursue clinical fellowship training in addiction medicine and HIV at UCSF.
Her clinical experiences as an attending physician working with patients at Zuckerberg San Francisco General, the Ward 86 HIV/AIDS Clinic, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health's Street Medicine program elucidated the limitations of existing allopathic addiction pharmacotherapies in addressing many of the deeper psychological and socio-structural issues that underlie the development and perpetuation of SUDs. Continuing to learn from the lived experiences of her patients, Dr. Mehtani grew increasingly interested in studying the potential role of psychedelics in the treatment of addictions, with a special focus on understanding avenues toward safely improving access to psychedelic-assisted therapy among medically and socially complex patients who may be less likely to seek care in conventional healthcare settings.
As a NIDA T32 postdoctoral fellow at Neuroscape, she is grateful for the opportunity to have dedicated time and mentorship to study these novel therapeutic agents through a lens of health equity under the guidance of Drs. Jennifer Mitchell and Brian Anderson.