The American Women's Hospital Service coordinated with Near East Relief to aide Armenian and Greek refugees following World War I. Elliott was called to duty January 1919 and directed to report to New York.

[12] She sailed on the USS Leviathan with 250 other Near East Relief personnel and physicians and nurses from the American Women's Hospital Service.

Elliott kept a detailed diary of the siege, wanting to leave a written account in the event she did not survive the ordeal.

[14] They trekked 75 miles (120 kilometers) across the Taurus Mountains for three days, braving freezing temperatures and a blizzard that killed half of the Armenian refugees.

[19] Elliott sailed back to the United States in May 1920 via France to recuperate from the ordeal with her parents in West Palm Beach, Florida.

[20] She decided to return to the Near East for another year of duty with the American Women's Hospital after she was recruited by Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy.

She was named Interim Executive Chairman of the American Women's Hospital Service in New York City in August 1920, replacing Dr. Lovejoy, who ran for Congress from Oregon, but was defeated.

Tensions again began to rise with Mustafa Kemal's revolutionary forces attacking Ismid and Bardizag, a nearby village.

[27] After a few weeks leave in Europe and making a speech at an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland[28] Elliott hastily returned to Greece in the wake of the burning of Smyrna in September 1922.

[30] She worked closely with fellow American physicians including Esther Pohl Lovejoy and Ruth Parmelee, and set up a quarantine station on the island of Macronissi.

[44] In 1924, Elliott joined the staff of the Woman's Medical College Hospital in Philadelphia (today's Drexel University).

in 1925 she was selected from fifty candidates to lead the public health department of St. Luke's International Medical Center in Tokyo, Japan.

[49] In 1929, Elliott went on a speaking and fund-raising tour of the United States with St. Luke's International Medical Center founder Rudolf Teusler, who founded the hospital in 1901.

[53] Elliott, along with all U.S. foreign nationals, was forced to leave Japan in 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II.

She worked in New York City from 1944-45, examining church workers and missionaries returning from World War II.