Gina Berman M.D.

Gina Mecagni Berman, MD grew up in Southern California and attended University of California at Santa Barbara for undergraduate studies, receiving a BS in Biopsychology in 1997. She graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 2001 with a Doctor of Medicine degree and moved to Phoenix to complete her residency in Emergency Medicine. She was chosen by the Emergency Medicine faculty at Maricopa Medical Center to be Chief Resident her third year. After completing residency, Dr. Mecagni began her career as an attending physician with Empower Emergency Physicians, and became a partner after her second year of practice.

During the past 10 years practicing Emergency Medicine, Dr. Mecagni found it frustrating at times that the same patients would cycle in and out of the ER, year after year, receiving the same treatments (surgery, antibiotics, narcotics, etc.) but weren’t necessarily getting any better. She would recommend that they try alternative therapies, such as acupuncture. When Arizona legalized non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries, she thought she could overcome the cost-barrier to alternative medicines by subsidizing the other therapies with the profits from medical marijuana. After collaborating with her business partner, Lilach Power, The Giving Tree was born!

Dr. Mecagni now spends most of her time as the Medical Director for two Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in Arizona: The Giving Tree Wellness Center of North Phoenix and The Giving Tree Wellness Center of Mesa, where they offer yoga, massage, naturopathic services including acupuncture and acupressure as well as the newly launched wellness coaching.

Dr. Mecagni’s foremost role is as a patient advocate. Her daily activities involve counseling patients, overseeing quality control in the cultivation and retail spaces (e.g. she has banned Butane-extracted products and oversees all products used on the plants) and keeping up with the latest research on medicinal cannabis.

She also is very active in the marijuana industry and community. She has been on the board of the Arizona Dispensaries Association since its inception in 2013 and is a lecturer for the second year at the Dignity Health Annual Pain Symposium. She has acted as the liaison between the Dispensaries and The Arizona Department of Health in trying effectuating good policies within the framework of the State Rules regarding Medical Marijuana. She also gave key testimony to the Administrative Law Judge hearing the case to add PTSD as a qualifying condition and followed this up with constant communications with the Department Director regarding critical research in the area, which resulted in the addition of PTSD as a qualifying condition in Arizona.