Karen Reece, PhD

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Education

• University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health - MS/PhD in Physiology

Professional Activities

Karen Reece, PhD, is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Medicine as well as Vice President of Research and Education at the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development. Her work focuses on community-engaged education and research focused on health, incarceration, and racial equity.

Dr. Reece develops and evaluates interdisciplinary educational and research initiatives that bridge academic institutions and community organizations. Her work focuses on the health impacts of incarceration, healthcare access for people impacted by the criminal legal system, community-engaged medical education, and systems-level approaches to reducing racial disparities. She has led and supported projects involving program evaluation, mixed-methods research, curriculum development, strategic planning, and cross-sector partnership building.

At Nehemiah, Dr. Reece coordinates adult community-based education related to racial justice and the criminal legal system and helps facilitate partnerships between researchers, healthcare providers, and community members with lived experience of incarceration. She also collaborates on medical education initiatives that prepare healthcare professionals to better understand and address the social, structural, and health-related consequences of incarceration.

Research Interests

Dr. Reece's research interests focus on the intersection of incarceration, reentry, health, and wellbeing. Her work examines how involvement in the criminal legal system shapes physical health, mental health, healthcare access, social connectedness, and long-term wellbeing for individuals, families, and communities. She is particularly interested in barriers to care during community reentry and the ways healthcare, social services, and correctional systems influence health outcomes after incarceration.