Juanita Merchant, M.D., Ph.D.

Juanita Merchant joined the faculty at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson in July 2018 as a professor of medicine in the UA Department of Medicine, chief of the UA Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and a member of the Cancer Biology Research Program at the UA Cancer Center.

In 2008, Dr. Merchant was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and appointed a member of the National Institutes of Health Council of Councils. In 2016, she also joined the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, a unit of the NIH. She grew up in Los Angeles and attended Stanford University for her undergraduate studies, later earning her medical degree and a doctorate at Yale University School of Medicine. Afterward, she did her internship and residency in internal medicine as well as a clinical and research fellowship at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, before completing a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of California Los Angeles. Prior to coming to the UA, she had been on faculty at the University of Michigan since 1991.

Dr. Merchant is board-certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology. She has written or co-written more than 75 peer-reviewed research publications and is editor or co-editor of two books and several book chapters.