January 31, 2013
HSRD welcomes Karen Siegel, P.T., M.A. as Capacity Building Program Manager. She will oversee HSRD research centers, including the launching of the new Centers of Innovation (COINs) this spring, and the HSRD Career Development Award Program.
Before joining HSR&D, Ms. Siegel served for over 27 years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service. She began her career in a clinical physical therapy position and then focused on research and research management with assignments at the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Food and Drug Administration. At AHRQ, she served as the Associate Director of the Evidence-based Practice Centers Program, a group of contracted research institutions that produced comparative effectiveness reviews and technology assessments of scientific evidence on health care interventions to help payers, providers, and patients make better treatment decisions. She also coordinated development of the Agency's largest request for applications, Clinical and Health Outcomes Initiative in Comparative Effectiveness (CHOICE), a national effort to establish a series of pragmatic clinical comparative effectiveness studies that included novel study designs with special focus on populations historically under-represented in clinical research.
Ms. Siegel was appointed by the Surgeon General as the Chief Therapist Officer of the Public Health Service providing leadership to the 150–member therapist category and discipline–focused advice to the Office of the Surgeon General. She has published research on the impact of mobility impairments on disability, serves on scientific advisory and editorial review boards in physical therapy, and served as Chair of the Musculoskeletal Scientific Merit Review Board for the Rehabilitation Research and Development Service.
