Student Profiles
Department of Community & Behavioral Health
DrPH students
Chelsea Wesner MPH, MSW
Research Scientist
- Centers for American Indian & Alaska Native Health
Email Address:chelsea.wesner@cuanschutz.edu
Chelsea Wesner (she/her) is a research scientist in the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health (CAIANH) at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Colorado School of Public Health, as well as a doctoral student in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. She has worked with Indigenous communities for more than 15 years across public health practice and research in her current role and others at the University of South Dakota, University of Oklahoma, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Tribal, Regional, and Territorial Support Team and Native Diabetes Wellness Program. Currently, she works with the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center at CAIANH on pilot research to conceptualize, measure, and understand early relational wellbeing and family economic wellbeing among Indigenous families and children and the relationship of these constructs to positive early child development. Chelsea has lived with her family in South Dakota on Lakota/Dakota lands for the last decade. Her roots and extended family are in Oklahoma, where she is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation.
Areas of Expertise
- American Indian and Alaska Native/Indigenous Health
- Early Relational Wellbeing
- Family Economic Wellbeing
- Early Child Development
Education, Licensure & Certifications
- Public Health Training Certificate in American Indian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2020
- MSW, Administrative and Community Practice, University of Oklahoma, 2010
- MPH, Health Promotion Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 2010
- BA, Sociology and American Indian Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006
Resumes/CV:
Awards
- Native Research Ambassadors Program, Center for American Indian Community Health, University of Kansas Medical Center, 2019
- Early Career Teaching Excellence Award, University of South Dakota School of Health Sciences, 2019