Bio
Dr. Cliff Sheckter is a California native, growing up in the rural Eastern Sierra. He graduated from UCLA with a BS in Anthropology and earned summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He attended USC (Keck) for medical school on an academic scholarship and graduated valedictorian with Alpha Omega Alpha honors. He fell in love with burn care while at USC/LA General Medical Center and completed surgical training at Stanford. While in residency, he pursued a fellowship/postdoc in Health Systems Design at Stanford’s Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC). He earned an MS in Health Policy from Stanford, focusing on health economics. He received additional training in Surgical Critical Care and Burn Surgery at the University of Washington.
Dr. Sheckter is a health services and health policy researcher. His work focuses on burn prevention, health economics in surgical care, and health equity outcomes in burn care. He has authored over 130 articles and numerous book chapters. His research has been published in JAMA, JAMA Network Open, JAMA Surgery, Annals of Surgery, Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Burns, and Journal of Burn Care & Research. His work has been featured in USA Today and the New York Times. He was the recipient of a career development award from the NIH and has funding from the Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Sheckter was awarded the American Burn Association (ABA) Traveling Fellow for 2023 and has won top abstract at the ABA Annual Meeting multiple times. He is an active member of the ABA Burn Prevention and Research Committees.
Dr. Sheckter is one of a few surgeons double-board certified in Surgical Critical Care and Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. He practices critical care medicine as an intensivist in the Stanford Surgical ICU. He is the Director of the Regional Burn Center at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center which is the only burn/trauma center for the San Francisco Bay Area. He performs scar reconstruction using surgical and laser techniques.
