Dr Merli is a board certified Family Medicine physician with over 11 years of experience helping patients improve their health and well-being. She is native to eastern North Carolina, and earned her undergraduate degree in Biology from East Carolina University in 2008. She attended medical school at the Brody School of Medicine where she was honored to be a Brody Scholar and graduated in 2014. She completed residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas where she also served as chief resident in 2017. After residency, she moved to west Texas and worked in the border city of El Paso for about 4 years before circling back home to North Carolina. Her clinic is based in the small town of Fuquay-Varina.

Her interests stem from primary and preventative care, and include obesity medicine, metabolic health, prevention of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and MASLD (fatty liver), as well as behavioral health. She enjoys staying up to date on weight management related to men’s health, as well as weight management related to women’s health including special considerations such as PCOS and menopause.

In her free time, she enjoys visiting US National Parks as well as traveling abroad. She has participated in medical trips to Ecuador and Zambia. She also enjoys trying new recipes, gardening, and spending time with her husband and 3 children.