Erica Nelson, MD, PhM, MAS

Erica Nelson, MD, PhM, MAS

Co-Director,
Humanitarian Geoanalytics Research and Education Programs
Erica Nelson, MD, PhM, MAS

Erica L Nelson, MD, PhM, MAS is an Emergency Medicine physician who conducts research on the use of geospatial methods for public health and humanitarian response. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin with an PhM in International Peace Studies and Development, she worked as a researcher and policy consultant for organizations serving conflict-affected populations in Nepal, Indonesia, the Balkans, Palestine, Ethiopia, and Sudan. She completed her medical training at the University of Washington, residency at the Harvard-Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program, and an MAS in Spatial Analysis for Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Currently, she is a physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Emergency Department, an instructor within the Division of Global Emergency Services and Humanitarian Programs within the Department of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the co-founder of the Harvard Humanitarian Geospatial Analysis Program at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Dr. Nelson is dedicated to the integration of critical geography, decolonization, and conflict sensitivity frameworks and the use of geospatial methods for health-oriented humanitarian programming and research. She has engaged in mixed-methods research regarding, for example, remote sensing in disaster management, gender-based vulnerability in refugee communities, the ecological impacts of refugee influx in Bangladesh, geospatial variables as they impact pre-hospital care in the Navajo Nation, the Palestinian/Israeli health referral program, and the interaction between climate, conflict, and population health.

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