Biography

Tamara Nelson, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Dr. Nelson is a proud alumna of Rutgers University in New Brunswick where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in psychology and exercise science. She also earned a Masters of Public Health (MPH) degree in epidemiology from the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University where she worked in community health at the San Ysidro Community Health Center in San Ysidro, California. Dr. Nelson received her doctorate (PhD) in clinical psychology from Clark University and completed her clinical psychology residency at the Greater Hartford Consortium (VA Medical Center—Newington, Community Mental Health Associates, and UCONN Health Sciences) in Connecticut and a postdoctoral research fellowship in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University (Butler Hospital and Women & Infant’s Hospital). Dr. Nelson’s research explores how contextual and cultural factors are associated with mental health and treatment-seeking among racial and ethnic groups in general and African American and Black women in particular. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary and is informed by her training in public health and clinical psychology, lived experience, and involves quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to address mental health equity.