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Dr. Pollie Bith-Melander (AKA Dr. Pollie) was born in Cambodia and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 10 years old. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, her masters and PHD degrees from the University of Hawaii-Manoa. She received her Master’s degree in Social Work from California State University at East Bay. A former faculty member at San Jose State, she is an assistant professor of social work at CSU Stanislaus.
Her research focus is on ethnomedicine, HIV/AIDS, Trauma, Refugees and Community Mental Health.
She conducts her research studies both in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. She is currently working on various research projects. One of them focuses on the misdiagnosing of children in urban public schools. She is also working with a team of researchers on a research project that examines clinical symptoms of burn pits among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Her current community project is on the 1.5 Generation of Southeast Asian Refugee Deportation, a visual ethnography entitling “Exiled Once Again.”