Nicky Mehtani, MD, MPH

ADVISORY TEAM

Nicky Mehtani, MD, MPH, is an addiction medicine physician and Assistant Professor at UCSF, based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG). Her work focuses on translating promising therapies into real-world care for medically and socially complex populations often underrepresented in clinical trials.

She led the KARE trial of ketamine-assisted therapy for publicly insured patients with methamphetamine use disorder and now leads PRISM, a NIDA-funded trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for methamphetamine use disorder among people with HIV and the first Schedule I psychedelic trial based at ZSFG. She also serves as a UCSF site co-PI on multisite psychedelic therapy trials.

As a practicing addiction medicine and HIV physician with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, she pioneered a low-barrier program delivering long-acting injectable HIV treatment and prevention to people experiencing homelessness and people who use drugs, populations largely excluded from the pivotal trials that led to these therapies’ FDA approval. The program’s findings, published in JAMA Network Open, show HIV viral suppression rising from roughly one in four patients to 100% over the program’s first four years, demonstrating how implementation research can close the gap between trial efficacy and equitable real-world access.