Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran was sworn into her second term in January of 2021 as the representative of Multnomah County’s District 1. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, graduated from UC Berkeley with Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Economics, and graduated from Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
Sharon practiced law for seven years in the areas of general civil litigation and intellectual property law. She also volunteered in children’s advocacy, in family law, and as a counselor on a child abuse prevention crisis line. Sharon left the practice of law to pursue her dream to become a doctor, engaging in volunteer work caring for underserved elders and in clinical research, and subsequently attending UCSF Medical School in San Francisco, where she met her husband, Fred.
Sharon and Fred did international health work during medical school, then did their residencies in Emergency Medicine together in Cincinnati, where their two children were born. They returned to the West Coast to raise their family and practice emergency medicine in the Portland area. In addition to practicing emergency medicine, for several years Sharon also served as Medical Director for the Oregon Foundation for Reproductive Health, where she advocated for the One Key Question pregnancy intention screening initiative, with a goal that all pregnancies be as wanted, planned, and healthy as possible.
Although Sharon’s primary work for the past five years has been as a County Commissioner, she has continued to do emergency medicine shifts, and also engage in volunteer medical work providing care to people living unsheltered through Portland Street Medicine, providing vaccinations to elders living in foster care and others through Multnomah County’s vaccination clinics, and supporting people staying in emergency shelters. Sharon has used her experience on the front line caring for those in crisis to inform her policy and advocacy work in mental health care, substance abuse prevention, police use of force, homelessness, coordination of services for the most vulnerable, and reproductive health, equity and justice.