Dr. Viet Nguyen obtained her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Sociology from the University of California, Riverside. She then obtained her MPH, focusing on infectious diseases and global health, from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed medical school at UCLA, where she also completed her general psychiatry training, as a Harbor Track Intern. She also created a community and global mental health interest group, and became the first CGP chief resident at UCLA. She helped design and participated in global mental health electives as a resident in South Africa and Indonesia. She then became the first global mental health fellow at the University of California, San Francisco’s HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, Leadership) Initiative, where she worked in rural Nepal as a consultant psychiatrist helping to build and integrate mental health systems into primary care. She also worked in LA County’s Department of Mental Health, doing field based work with highly vulnerable populations (severely mentally ill, geriatric, undocumented, and homeless). Aside from the aforementioned, she also has global health experience in Nigeria, Malawi, and India.

Dr. Nguyen is currently working at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health as a Street Psychiatrist. She also has volunteered for Physicians for Human Rights, providing asylum evaluations, since 2015. She is the medical director for Homeless Healthcare, Los Angeles. She is also a community organizer and focuses on abolition work in Los Angeles.