Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center,Prof of Clin Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Merritt Schreiber is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Lundquist Institute and Senior Advisor, Terrorism and Disaster Program, National Center for Child Traumatic Stress in the Department of Psychiatry, Semel Neuropsychiatric Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He serves as the Lead for the Mental Health Workgroup for the Western Regional Alliance for Pediatric Emergency Management (WRAP-EM), Lead for Emergency Mental Health Preparedness Sub Domain for PPN and is the Chair of Disaster Response for the California Psychological Association. He serves on the  CA 4 DMAT Team/National Disaster Medical System and State of California Medical Assistance Team(CALMAT).  He previously served as the Southern California Advisor for ARC Disaster Mental Health and co-wrote the ARC PFA course.

Dr. Schreiber’s work focuses on developing population-level models of a “stepped continuum of mental health care” (e.g., mental health “first aid”) in mass-casualty disasters and other traumatic incidents. He also works on enhancing resilience and response of emergency disaster medical workers, pre-hospital first responders, and others, using an evidence-based model.

As a result of this work, Dr. Schreiber has developed varied tools and a pediatric disaster mental health CONOPS designed to provide population level response tactics to all-hazard events impacting children, youth and families. This includes the PsySTART Mental Health Incident Management System and a stepped “triage to care” of at-risk pediatric patients and emergency medical responders. He is also the developer of “Anticipate, Plan and Deter,” a disaster medical provider resilience system and “Listen.Protect.Connect” family to family Psychological First Aid.

Dr. Schreiber received the Joint Meritorious Service Medal serving as USPHS Reserve Officer on detached service to NORAD-USNORTHERN Command, the American Psychological Association Presidential Citation for 9/11 response and California Psychological Association Distinguished Humanitarian Award.  He previously served on the HHS Secretary’s Advisory Board on Emergency Public Information and Communications. He deployed for HHS to Miramar for the COVID1-19 response effort. He recently received the HHS Civilian Covid-19 Response Medal for his deployments in support of NDMS response to COVID-19 Miramar MCAS. He received the HHS Assistant Secretary of Health Award for Distinguished Service in response to the Maui Wildfires.