Heather A. Olden is a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has a B.S. in molecular biology from Hampton University, and a MPH in international health epidemiology from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. As an Epidemiologist, Heather specializes in patient and community engagement, strategic planning, program and research study development and management, and qualitative data collection and analysis. She works on the Be a Mom Study and the Black Birth Equity Study, two Black maternal health equity projects at Tufts University where she leads qualitative data collection and analysis and consults within the private sector on community engagement. Her research interests are focused on the intersection of social justice and maternal health and utilizing patient and community engagement methodology to ground the work in the voices of the lived experience while authentically translating research into clinical practice and policy.
Heather’s project focuses on assessing Boston area hospitals for infrastructure readiness in preparation for Medicaid’s expansion of coverage of doula services in Massachusetts. The two objectives are: 1) To assess the infrastructure readiness of Boston area hospitals serving Black birthing people from the perspective of hospital doula program administrators and their contracted doulas; and 2) To assess what readiness looks like for doulas who aren’t employed at selected hospitals but plan to assist birthing people who do deliver at selected hospitals.