Dr. Nelson's research combines epidemiologic, statistical, and geospatial modeling techniques to identify where and why health disparities occur so that appropriate interventions can be developed to help overcome them. His research has utilized novel online recruitment techniques and Bayesian spatio-temporal models. His main areas of interest include sexual health, screening, cancer prevention, and social epidemiology. His methods have been applied to address several public health issues such as human papillomavirus (HPV), HPV vaccination, condom availability, lead exposure, violence, substance abuse, gestational weight gain, air pollution, salmonella, and the Zika Virus.
- Spatio-temporal epidemiology
- Cancer screening and prevention
- Sexually transmitted infections
- Health disparities
- Substance abuse
- Bayesian spatial statistics
- Multilevel models
- Recruitment for online studies
