Chelsea Wesner is a public health faculty 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 helps lead research on child and family wellbeing through the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center at Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health. The goals of this research are to conceptualize, measure, and understand early relational wellbeing and family economic wellbeing among Indigenous families with young children and their relationships to positive child development.
Chelsea lives in South Dakota with her husband and children. Her roots and extended family are in Oklahoma, and she is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation.