Dr. Nelsonhas eleven years of experience in working with communities in Maine and Wisconsin as a principal investigator and Co-principal investigator on a number of funded projects through federal, state, and local programs. He completed a three-year, post-doctoral fellowship in the area of community based participatory research and recently accepted a position as assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Center for Healthy Communities at MCW.

During his time in Milwaukee, Nelson has completed an assessment of three neighborhoods concerning physical activity and nutrition, worked on a team that developed a diabetes education curriculum for Spanish speaking individuals taught by community health workers. Most recently, he led an effort that resulted in funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Milwaukee Childhood Obesity Prevention Project to reduce childhood obesity at the eight United Neighborhood Centers of Milwaukee (UNCOM).