Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

Melissa E. Dichter, PhD, MSW, CHERP COIN Investigator, is Associate Professor in the College of Public Health at Temple University. Dr. Dichter completed an HSR&D Career Development Award and now leads VA-funded Investigator Initiated Research. Currently, she is Principal Investigator of Strengthening Suicide Prevention Efforts for Women Veterans through the Veterans Crisis Line.

Dr. Dichter's research focuses on individuals' experiences with, and system responses to, intimate partner violence (IPV). Her work has examined healthcare system identification of and response to patient experience with IPV; IPV survivor experiences with criminal legal system intervention; health and social impacts of IPV experience; IPV survivor engagement in social services, social relationships, and advocacy; and IPV experiences of women military veterans. Dr. Dichter's work has also focused on identifying and meeting the health and psychosocial needs of women military veterans and of gender and sexual minority populations. Dr. Dichter has methodological expertise in primary data collection, mixed methods and qualitative research methods, and community-engaged research.

Dr. Dichter earned her Ph.D. in Social Welfare and Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.A. in Child Development from Tufts University. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in health services research at the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion and now leads major VA-funded research to study intimate partner violence assessment and response in the VA healthcare system. Dr. Dichter is an Interdisciplinary Research Leader (IRL) in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Building a Culture of Health Together program. Dr. Dichter, Ashlee Murray, MD, MPH, and Jessica Palardy, MSW lead "Centering Survivor Voices to Improve Medical-Community Partnerships Addressing Intimate Partner Violence." https://irleaders.org/team/team-philadelphia/.

Updated 9/14/2021