Heather A. Olden, originally from Durham, N.C., is a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) student at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She earned a Bachelor of Science with honors in molecular biology from Hampton University, in Hampton, Va., and a Master of Public Health in international health epidemiology from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. During her final year at Michigan, she was elected President of the Public Health Students of African Descent where she led initiatives in partnership with school administration and other student organizations to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts at the school of public health. Every summer since graduating with her MPH in 2014, she has served as a mentor for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Undergraduate Public Health Scholars (CUPS Program) University of Michigan Future Public Health Leadership Program where she mentors first generation college students interested in pursuing public health providing career advice, shadowing opportunities, professional development training, and support as they navigate their summer internships. In her former role as an Epidemiologist in Detroit, MI, Heather specialized in patient and community engagement, strategic planning, program development and management, and qualitative data collection and analysis. She has presented at numerous national academic and patient advocacy conferences and consulted with health systems across the country on how to effectively entrench patient and community engagement into complex organizational structures. As part of her consulting work, she has worked with many organizations to embed Diversity & Inclusion initiatives and infrastructure into their strategic plan and programming and works to ensure D&I is treated as a priority and not an obligation.
Her research interests are centered largely on the impact of social justice on maternal health, as well as on using patient engagement methodology to authentically translate research into clinical practice and policy. Heather works with the Justice-Involved Women Collaborative, a network of academic institutions working on research, policy, training issues, and topics at the intersection of incarceration and maternal child health and is a member of the Maternal Outcomes for Translational Health Equity Research (M.O.T.H.E.R.) Lab, where she leads the lab’s strategic planning and participates on the Community Engagement, Advocacy, and Policy committee. She is also a Research Assistant on an NIH funded R01 grant assessing the effectiveness of implementing maternal safety bundles and prenatal, birth, and postpartum support from community doulas to improve the level of maternal care for mothers of color and decrease disparities in severe maternal morbidity and mortality. Following completion of her doctoral degree, she plans to create a pipeline from maternal health research to clinical practice to policy development that is grounded in the voices of those with lived experiences.
Heather is Student Body President at Harvard Chan School of Public Health 2022-2023 and an active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She is an entrepreneur, owning her own consulting business and an event and home décor e-boutique.
