Dr. Mollie Nisen still remembers the patient vividly. A woman in labor, arriving at the hospital with the devastating reality that her baby had died during pregnancy. As a physician, Nisen was trained to respond clinically, but what unfolded during that shift revealed something deeper about the systems surrounding maternal care.
Her supervising physician insisted on a drug screen. “It must be drugs,” they said. The assumption, made quickly and forcefully, had nothing to do with medical evidence. It had everything to do with where the patient came from and how she was perceived. The humanity of the moment—the grief of a mother losing her child—was overshadowed by bias and stigma.
The focus was taken off the fact that this was a woman whose child had just died.
That experience broke something open in Dr. Nisen. It showed her how stigma lives in the hands of care providers. And it made clear what kind of doctor she needed to become: not only someone who shows up with skill and compassion but also someone who teaches others to do the same. That moment lit a path toward advocacy, teaching and reform.
Finding Her People
In her clinical practice and advocacy work, Dr. Nisen, now a practicing addiction medicine physician at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in California, often finds herself pushing against walls. Walls built from outdated beliefs, stigma and systems that fail the people they claim to serve. Especially when it comes to opioid use disorder, harm reduction, or trauma-informed care, she says the resistance can feel endless.
That’s where ZERO TO THREE became a lifeline.
Through ZERO TO THREE, Nisen found not only alignment, but fuel. “You were pushing me even further,” she says. The organization’s deep commitment to harm reduction, family-centered approaches and trauma-informed practice wasn’t just encouraging, it was liberating.
To be able to interact with people within ZERO TO THREE who are on the same page as me, that mutual understanding is a balm to my soul.
ZERO TO THREE didn’t just echo her values. It challenged her to grow, to imagine new ways to integrate harm reduction into child welfare work, and to build sustainability into her advocacy. For someone who regularly holds space for others’ trauma, that kind of solidarity is essential.
More Than Medicine
Medicine is personal for Nisen. It’s rooted in justice, equity and empathy. And in the emotionally demanding world of family care, especially when working with patients who are often marginalized or misunderstood, burnout is a real threat. But finding a network that shares your language, your lens and your fire changes everything.
ZERO TO THREE, for Nisen, is that network. It’s where passion meets purpose. It’s where the work becomes sustainable. And it’s where she’s reminded she’s not alone.
