Virtual
“Healthcare Coverage at a Crossroads”
Speaker bios
Karen Siegel, MPH, is the Deputy Director at Health Equity Solutions, where she supports the organization’s policy work and operations. Karen joined HES in 2020, with a break from late 2023 to early 2025 to work on 1332 waivers and agent/broker regulation for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. She was thrilled and humbled to rejoin HES after leaving federal service.
Prior to joining Health Equity Solutions, Karen worked as a Medicaid advocate and researcher at Connecticut Voices for Children and as a public health researcher and teacher in Singapore. She is passionate about advancing health equity and anti-racist policy through state and local systems, with a focus on centering community voices, embedding equity in health systems transformation, and building more holistic approaches to health care and health insurance by fostering connections between the formal health system and communities.
Karen spends her free time enjoying her kids, cat, tortoise, New Haven community fun, and learning new things. Recently, she has been learning how to sail and reading lots of YA fiction with her kids.
Gretchen Shugarts is a Commission Analyst for the Commission on Racial Equity in Public Health (CREPH). She is a proud Nuyorican (Puerto Rican from New York) who was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Black & Puerto Rican Studies from Hunter College (CUNY) and a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Connecticut. Her undergraduate and graduate research centered around the social inequities faced by people of color within the educational system.
Gretchen has worked for the State of Connecticut in various capacities ranging from the Judicial Branch to the Legislative Branch. She spent six years at Waterbury Superior Court, assisting those with pending criminal cases. She joined the Legislative Branch in 2020 serving in the non-partisan Legislative Commissioners’ Office. She is thrilled to be at CREPH and looks forward to bringing her lived, educational, and professional experiences to the commission.
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