Editor’s Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly compiles a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2025 Top Doctors list comprises more than 400 physicians representing 60 specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the caregivers who have been a Top Doc time and again. For a complete list, pick up a copy of our June 2024 issue from your favorite newsstand, or — even better — subscribe.
When she peers into the microscope at a drop of blood, Dr. Marquita Nelson, a hematologist at the Regional One Health Diggs-Kraus Sickle Cell Clinic, says it’s like a mystery unfolds before her. She’s the detective, the blood cells her clues. “I love the idea that you can look at a patient’s blood and figure out what’s going on,” she says. “Every day, I feel like I’m learning something new.”
Nelson has always been interested in what goes on beneath the surface of the skin. When she was young, she would look through her mom Carolyn’s anatomy books from nursing school. “The muscles, the bones, the joints, and all of that was really neat,” she says. “I was always interested in science as a kid. So, as I looked into medicine more and more, I really loved the idea that you could combine your passion for science and inquiry as well as help people, including people who look like yourself and are maybe underserved and underrepresented.”
Even though she’s trained in oncology and hematology, Nelson has focused her practice on noncancerous but often life-threatening conditions in hematology — from sickle-cell disease to anemia. “There’s a shortage of people like me,” she explains. “We call ourselves benign or classical hematologists, and it’s a truly unmet need. I find that, for me, I can have a greater impact doing that.”
“It’s an exciting time to be a hematologist if you’re practicing in sickle-cell disease-related disorders.” — Dr. Marquita Nelson
Part of the reason for a lack of classical hematologists has to do with incoming doctors’ limited exposure to the field. It’s almost a cyclical trap: Fewer classical hematologists mean fewer mentors for future classical hematologists who are very much needed. “If you never see somebody like me [a classical hematologist], you don’t know that we exist.”
Yet Nelson, who often trains fellows at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, isn’t discouraged. “I think that a lot of my mission is to expose more and more trainees to the field,” she says.
She offers another reason for hope. “It’s an exciting time to be a hematologist if you’re practicing in sickle-cell disease-related disorders,” Nelson says. When she started medical school at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, only one medication was FDA-approved to treat sickle-cell disease; now there are four. And, in December 2023, the FDA approved bone marrow transplant gene therapy for sickle cell disease — “a potential cure,” she says. “It’s so exciting to be able to have more to offer my patients.”
After all, her patients are what first attracted her to the field. “They had a very good sickle-cell program [at Emory],” she says. “I just loved the patient population because there are patients that you get to take care of for their whole lives, and they’re very grateful and very wonderful patients who are strong and courageous.”
And these days, patient care has become even more personal for Nelson as she and her husband, Marshall, advocate for their 2-year-old son Shepherd’s healthcare. “He has a rare genetic disorder,” Nelson says. “So I’m able to experience both the challenges that I face as a physician advocating for my patients, but also as a parent advocating for my child. It’s opened my eyes to a lot of the difficulties in navigating the healthcare system. … If I can use my influence for good and give patients what they need, I’m going to.”
