Micayla Jones

Hi, I’m Micayla! I was born and raised in Charlotte, NC and attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for college where I majored in psychology and minored in both Deaf Studies/American Sign Language and Chemistry. While there, I worked as a research assistant in a lab that studied group differences in processing of emotional information, particularly among people with certain genetic risk factors. Through this work, I learned how critical it is to evaluate contextual and environmental factors that may affect patient health. I also began to develop my passion for serving underserved populations and this led me to coordinate service-learning trips for other university students to learn about topics such as education for immigrants and refugees and domestic sex trafficking. My interest in serving unhoused individuals began during my first year of medical school at UNC Chapel Hill, where I spent the summer with a PATH (Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness) team on the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, finding individuals that needed psychiatric treatment and basic living resources. This interest also motivated me to lead a student mobile clinic at a men’s shelter while at UNC. Additionally, I am interested in suicide prevention and Addiction Psychiatry. Outside of medicine, I enjoy listening to music, trying new restaurants, and binge-watching TV series!