Desha Holden-Nelson

NREI Fellow

Discipline: Child Advocacy

Desha Holden-Nelson—a native of South-Central Los Angeles, California—is a fierce maternal and family health equity advocate with a deep love for parents. She earned her Bachelor of Science and Master of Public Health degrees at Xavier University of Louisiana and trained as a birth doula while interning with a Healthy Start program in New Orleans, an experience that set her on a path to providing community-based maternal health services and centering parental well-being in early childhood care. For the past 10 years, Desha has served as a doula, intentionally supporting Black birthing families. As Principal of helpHER Consulting, she provides lactation counseling, car seat safety education, and childbirth education to parents and caregivers, while collaborating with health systems, government agencies, legislators, and community coalitions to advance birth equity– centered policy improvements.

Through her direct service work and her role as coordinator for Healthy Birth Initiatives, a countywide maternal and child health program, Desha identified critical gaps in access to essential, culturally responsive services for birthing families in the Portland, Oregon, metro area. Her advocacy to address these gaps helped make Oregon one of the first states to require commercial insurance reimbursement for birth and postpartum doula services— and the very first to mandate Medicaid and commercial insurance reimbursement for lactation counselors and educators. A John R. Lewis Fellow and co-author of Collaborative Anti-Racist Perinatal Care: A Case Study of the Healthy Birth Initiatives–Providence Health System Partnership (Genealogy, 2025), Desha continues to center parental well-being as a foundation for improving child and societal health. After completing the fellowship, she plans to pursue a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) in health policy and management and work in government relations for a national nonprofit serving families.