Tim Mercer is the director of global health at Dell Medical School and an assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health and Internal Medicine. He is a primary care physician for the Health Care for the Homeless program with CommUnityCare, Austin’s largest federally qualified health center. He is interested in solving health system challenges to improve access, quality and equity in health for vulnerable populations globally.
Mercer studied biology and philosophy at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He received a Master in Public Health with a focus in social and behavioral sciences from the Yale School of Public Health and a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine. He completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency training program at Duke University Medical Center.
Following his training, he served for two years as the medicine team leader for the Academic Model Providing Access to Health Care in Eldoret, Kenya. AMPATH is an academic global health partnership between Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya and a consortium of North American academic medical centers led by Indiana University. In this role, he held joint faculty positions in the Departments of Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine and Moi University School of Medicine.
At Dell Med, Mercer leads the development of the global health program. Under his leadership, Dell Med has joined the AMPATH Consortium in Kenya. He is also seeking to establish a long-term, mutually beneficial, bilateral partnership with a medical school in México to engage across the trifold academic mission of service, teaching and research to strengthen health systems and improve health outcomes for low-income people in both México and Texas. He teaches and mentors medical students on global health and is also engaging interdisciplinary faculty members from across the campus of The University of Texas at Austin in global health work.