About
Dr. Stefanie Gillson is from Mni Sota Makoce also known as Minnesota and the Dakota homelands. She is a psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center and a fellow in the Yale National Clinician Scholars Program. She received her medical degree from the University of Minnesota, attending the Duluth campus where her training was focused on Indigenous Health. She finished her General Psychiatry Residency and Public Psychiatry Fellowship at Yale University in 2021 and served as Chief Resident of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She subsequently graduated from Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship in 2023 from the Yale Child Study Center where she was Melvin Lewis Medical Student Teacher of the Year. Throughout this time, she served as the co-founder of the Yale Women’s Mental Health Conference and Yale Women’s Housestaff Association.
Her research is focused on community-based initiatives to address mental health disparities among Indigenous youth and communities, using both historical and contemporary perspectives while emphasizing cultural strengths. She is an active member of the Association of American Indian Physicians where her primary focus is recruiting Indigenous youth into the medical field.
Dr. Gillson’s medical practice is grounded in the belief that many health outcomes are rooted in social inequalities, for Indigenous peoples, and historical colonization policies. She believes that working together with communities clinically as well as from a research perspective can improve health equity and social justice.
Outside of the academic life, you will find her with her family or running with the New Haven Road Runners.