A. Katrina Nelson, PhD, MPH, MSc

Katrina Nelson’s research questions how the way we interact with one another impacts our health. A specialist in qualitative and mixed methods, her research is informed by years as a bilingual researcher living in Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, the Navajo Nation, and urban United States. With public health training from Europe and the U.S., she applies her topical expertise in early child development and youth mental health to emerging issues relevant to our time: the use of firearms, caregiver/ child interaction and screen use, and social aspects of anxiety and other behavioral disorders.

Katrina's Fulbright-funded dissertation research examined corporal punishment use and intergenerational trauma among adolescent mothers and their young children in the Dominican Republic. Prior to that, she led two community-based early child interventions in Lima, Peru funded by Grand Challenges Canada. She is now building her research program while working on youth community-based firearm injury prevention initiatives at the Yale School of Public Health and caregiver-focused prevention and treatment at the Yale Child Study Center's Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program.