Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Dr. Nelson's traditional research program is focused on the epidemiology and complex etiology of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis. A recent additional focus of her work is on the development of mobile health tools to carry out prospective research studies on neurologic disorders such as migraine headache.
As the Faculty Associate Director of Research for the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, Dr. Nelson is leading strategic initiatives that involve a growing number of population health scientists at Stanford. Our goal is to develop innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to address the critical determinants of population health, including but not limited to strategies that can be addressed using electronic health care records from health information exchanges in defined geographic regions.