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By: Olesea Svet, April 2026

There is a moment Dr. Mejia has heard more than once, in more exam rooms and community settings than she can count: a patient pausing mid-sentence, then saying something like —

“You don’t sound like a doctor. You actually listen.”

Dr. Mejia took that as a compliment — maybe the highest one she's gotten. And it points to something that has quietly defined her career at Schmidt College of Medicine at �����Դ�ɼ���: a commitment to showing up and staying long enough to actually hear what people need.

On April 16, �����Դ�ɼ��� honored that commitment when Dr. Mejia received the 2025–2026 University Faculty Service Award at the Employee Service Awards Ceremony — a university-wide recognition of faculty who demonstrate outstanding service and meaningful contribution to their communities.

“Dr. Mejia exemplifies what it means to be a physician-citizen. Her work extends well beyond the walls of our college — into the communities we are here to serve — and in doing so, she models exactly the kind of medicine we are building here in Palm Beach County.” — Lewis S. Nelson, MD, Dean, Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine

What Drew You Here

Dr. Mejia did not arrive at this kind of medicine through a single turning point. It came in layers — and the first layer came early. Before medical school, she accompanied her father, also a physician, on medical missions to remote areas of Colombia. Those trips showed her something no classroom could: how much of health depends not on diagnosis, but on context.

"They showed me how much care depends on context," she says — where people live, what resources are available, and the relationships built along the way.

She went on to medical school in Colombia, and when she came to the United States for residency, that lens sharpened rather than softened. She found herself drawn to the space where clinical care meets the environments people actually live in — which is what led her to preventive medicine. "It felt like a natural fit for how I wanted to practice," she says. "One that recognizes that health is not just individual, but shaped by families, communities, and the conditions people live in."

Prevention and community engagement, she found, allowed her to do something the traditional clinical encounter rarely affords: stay connected, build trust over time, and make an impact that reaches beyond any single visit. That realization has never left her.

Meeting People Where They Are

Service, for Dr. Mejia, has never been a side project. It is, as she puts it, “showing up consistently for others and using my training to meet people where they are.” As a Professor of Population Health and Fellow of both the American College of Preventive Medicine and the American Society of Addiction Medicine, she has spent her career doing exactly that — at the intersection of clinical medicine and public health, in places where access to both is hardest to reach.

That philosophy has taken her into communities with limited access to care, where she has built prevention and health partnerships designed to last — the kind of partnerships built on sustained trust and designed to last beyond any single grant cycle. At the national level, she has contributed through the National Hispanic Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine to strengthen the physician workforce and improve care for patients facing the steepest barriers to getting it. That sustained commitment earned her recognition from the NHMA itself, which honored her last year with its 2025 Unsung Hero Award — a distinction given to physicians whose contributions to their communities and their profession run deep and steady, long before anyone stops to name them.

What connects all of it, she says, is listening before speaking — bringing expertise, while also having the humility to recognize that communities already have knowledge worth learning from.

“Showing up consistently for others and using my training to meet people where they are.”

The Work in Practice

One patient has stayed with her.

The person had been cycling in and out of care for a substance use condition — on paper, a pattern of missed visits and limited engagement. But when Dr. Mejia slowed down and made space for a real conversation, a different story emerged.

"What shifted was not the treatment itself, but the interaction," she says. By creating room for a more open conversation and bringing in team members who could offer additional support, the patient found it easier to stay connected to care.

Over time, that patient reconnected with their children, returned to school, and maintained long-term recovery.

"That experience stayed with me because it reinforced how much trust shapes everything in this space," Dr. Mejia says. "Without it, even the best plans don't move forward. With it, meaningful change becomes possible."

What Students See

Dr. Mejia brings the same orientation into the classroom. Her expertise in prevention, substance use, and the broader drivers of health in communities with limited access to care isn’t just academic content she teaches — it’s lived work she invites students into. She deliberately creates opportunities for them to be part of it, not just hear about it.

The message she wants them to carry: service is not something you do alongside your medical career. It is part of it.

“It helps you better understand your patients, strengthens your sense of purpose, and reminds you why you chose medicine. It also opens opportunities to make a broader impact beyond traditional settings.”

Shared Work, Shared Credit

When Dr. Mejia reflects on what this award means, she is quick to look outward.

“It reflects the collective work of many community partners, colleagues, and students. I am truly grateful.”

That instinct — to credit the people around her — runs deeper than modesty. The collaborators she names are not peripheral to her work. They are the model. Students brought directly into community settings. Partners who opened doors that take years to earn. Colleagues who share her conviction that medicine extends well beyond the clinic. Dr. Mejia has always understood that the most durable thing you can build is not a program but a relationship — and that a relationship, once built, belongs to everyone in it.  That is also what she is passing to the physicians coming through Schmidt College of Medicine: not just clinical skill, but a way of practicing — one that measures itself not only by what you deliver, but by what you leave behind.

Showing up. Listening. Staying long enough to build something together. For Dr. Mejia, that has never been a supplement to excellent medicine. It is excellent medicine.