A path into public health
McNellan’s interest in public health began during her undergraduate years. As a neuroscience major, she knew she wanted a career connected to health. But she didn’t want to go to medical school. “I was looking at other ways of being involved in healthcare and became really interested in public health through that,” she said.
It was work opportunities abroad that sparked her interest in social policy and maternal and child health. “I worked in and learned about a spectrum of health care systems and could see how those systems and their policies had implications and ripple effects for population health.”
For example, working with children in India and studying in Copenhagen exposed her to stark differences in healthcare systems. “It was fascinating to see how different system orientations supported populations or had gaps where they could be helping,” she said.
When it comes to system gaps, McNellan saw opportunity.
“We have the answers, and we know how to solve them. We just don’t always have the means or the resources. Yet it’s a problem we can fix, and it’s a good opportunity to make change.”
When it came time for a graduate degree, she pursued a MPH in global health, wanting to be someone who could lead change and help children around the world. During her program at the University of Washington, McNellan became increasingly interested in maternal and child health. While her experiences abroad confirmed that she wanted to make a career out of helping children, her interests turned to a domestic focus when she thought about the gaps in our healthcare systems and social policies.
“Our healthcare systems, and social systems in general, often fail women and children the most,” she said. “It was really motivating for me to want to be a part of change in those areas.”
With that, McNellan’s current trajectory took shape, and she continued to a PhD from the University of North Carolina.
Home to Colorado
McNellan is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management & Policy at the Colorado School of Public Health, as well as an Academic Leadership Counsel Liaison between the school and the CU Anschutz Center for Bioethics and Humanities.
She grew up in Colorado and was excited for the opportunity to come back. “It feels surreal sometimes that I’m here doing this dream career in the dream spot of Colorado,” she said. “It’s rewarding to be in such a beautiful place surrounded by family and friends.”
Research, teaching, and everything in between
There is no single “typical” day in McNellan’s work. Her time is divided among research, teaching, service, and ongoing training. Her role currently leans toward research, supported by a K01 Career Development Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The grant also provides protected time for her to continue learning.
“I love that there’s no typical day,” she said. “I get to be a perpetual student.” Part of McNellan’s work currently involves expanding her training in causal inference and family violence more broadly. “It’s a really exciting place to be in my career, and I think CU Anschutz is a really good spot to be early career faculty.”
Across all her work, McNellan remains focused on a central goal to generate evidence that can inform policies to better support children and families.
Could paid leave impact family violence?
One of the things that McNellan is currently enthusiastic about is leading a CDC-funded K01 project examining how paid family leave policies may influence family violence outcomes. The research focuses on Colorado’s relatively new and expanded paid FAMLI program, which provides support for new parents in addition to other family caregivers and qualifying employees on medical leave.
“What if there are broader impacts than the intended consequences of the policy, and one of those might be a reduction in family violence?" she asked. "If we can reduce stress and increase financial stability during that vulnerable perinatal period, then maybe there's protective impacts on intimate partner violence and child maltreatment.”
If those connections between the paid bonding leave and a reduction in intimate partner violence or child maltreatment are supported by evidence, the implications could extend beyond Colorado. Findings may inform broader policy conversations at the national level, where the United States remains one of the only high-income nations without federal paid family leave.
Bioethics as a guiding framework
McNellan’s interest in bioethics started with a high school History Day project on stem cell research. In college, she minored in bioethics after taking a philosophy of science class, then continued taking philosophy classes as she continued her education through her doctoral program. Today, she describes bioethics as foundational to her research approach. When the opportunity to collaborate more closely with the Center came up, she was excited to have a more formal way to keep that interest going. “Bioethics is the framework with which I approach my research broadly,” she said.
Her work in child welfare brings persistent ethical challenges. One central tension involves balancing children’s safety with respect for parental rights.
“There’s a dual obligation,” she explained. “We have a social obligation to protect children because they are vulnerable, but also to respect that parents have the right to raise their own children.”
This tension shapes decision-making across policy and practice, where many cases aren’t simple extremes with clear right and wrong answers. McNellan also highlights the ethical weight of errors in child welfare systems. “A false positive is finding abuse when there was none. A false negative is missing abuse when it exists. Both have serious consequences,” she said. “The stakes are very high.”
Understanding social policy and its impact
McNellan defines social policy as any system level policies or structures that impact society. This includes health care policies like access to reproductive health care, health insurance, or emergency medical care. It can also include the impacts of other public-facing systems, like education systems, transportation systems or criminal justice systems.
“These policies impact the health and well-being of populations in countless ways from small day-to-day experiences in school or in the workplace to life and death questions such as access to reproductive health or acute medical care when it’s needed,” she said.
“Historically, systems weren’t designed with mothers and children in mind,” she said. As a result, many policies may function as intended yet still fail to support these populations due to historical biases. “We have an obligation to rethink and adjust the policies we have in place and design them with mothers and children in mind at the forefront, not as an afterthought.”
Examples such as paid family leave, universal childcare, and reproductive health access illustrate how policy decisions can influence both daily experiences and long-term health outcomes. These policies are highly vulnerable to getting bogged down in political conflict, which makes empirical social policy research results even more important.
Research can prevent injury and violence
In her work, McNellan applies epidemiologic methods to study injury and violence. She describes epidemiology as the study of health or disease in different groups of people. “It's asking questions like, Who is affected? Where and when do events occur? What are the contributing factors?”
She gives the classic example of infectious diseases. “You can imagine COVID spreading around your network. Epidemiologists study the spread. They study who got it, how bad everyone's experience was, and the risks and protective factors.”
“Injury and violence epidemiology applies that same framework to things like car accidents or homicide,” she said. “We look at who's impacted by injury and violence, when and where, and what the risks and protective factors are.”
Patterns emerge when researchers study violence. McNellan says it’s a common misconception that injury and violence are random.
“Just because something is difficult to predict doesn’t mean it’s unpredictable."
Research can not only identify patterns but also inform policies that reduce harm, making prevention more tangible. “It starts to feel less like an ambiguous cloud of how will we ever solve this problem?” she said. “We actually do have ways of approaching issues like firearm violence. There are very real, concrete ways that science says that we can mitigate that harm, even if it feels on the day-to-day basis like it’s random.”
Changes in child welfare
McNellan sees the current moment in child welfare as both challenging and full of opportunity. She notes increased debate within the field alongside growing interdisciplinary collaboration.
“In the last several years, there’s been more conversation about what changes should happen in the field,” she said. At the same time, researchers from fields like economics, sociology, public health and statistics have increasingly joined social workers in their endeavor to explore child welfare-related questions.
McNellan sees these shifts creating the space to strengthen research and encourage innovation. “We need better data, more community input, and stronger partnerships,” she said. While acknowledging ongoing challenges, she sees potential for meaningful improvements in how systems support children and families.
When it comes to moving forward, McNellan says the field needs to do two things.
“First, we need to look back and reflect on what we have and haven’t accomplished as researchers in public child welfare. Second, we need to continually do better science so that we can stand behind our research with confidence and say,‘this is what we know.’”
On her own time
When she’s not at work, McNellan is busy as a new mom and as a dancer. “I'm the daughter of an Irish immigrant, so I've been an Irish dancer since before I can remember.” She was recently a member of a team that won the World Championship in Belfast. McNellan is now sharing her love of dance with her one-year-old son. “Introducing him to the music and kind of dancing around the house with him has been really fun.” Even though McNellan doesn’t have as much time to commit to dancing these days, she still dances and performs regularly with a group of friends. She also enjoys writing as a creative outlet.
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