Triveni Defries, MD, MPH

Triveni DeFries, MD, MPH is the Executive Director of the UCSF Health  & Human Rights Initiative. She is an expert clinician and trainer on medical evaluations of asylum seekers and survivors of torture and ill-treatment. She is an Assistant Professor at University of California, San Francisco Department (UCSF) in the Division of General Internal Medicine and core faculty in the Institute of Global Health Sciences. She is a physician who is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. She studied Human Rights and Latin American Studies and then completed an MPH in Global Health at Columbia University. She completed medical school, residency and fellowship training at UCSF. She practices primary care and addiction medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. She co-directs the UCSF Human Rights Collaborative where she performs forensic medical evaluations for people seeking asylum in the United States and teaches learners and clinicians.  She co-founded the national Asylum Medicine Training Initiative and has collaborated with Physician for Human Rights, Synergy and other experts worldwide to increase the capacity of clinicians to perform documentation of human rights abuses using trauma-informed care and the Istanbul Protocol. Her special interests are in immigrant health, human rights and addiction medicine.