Building Robust Community-Based Health Care

Simran Chugani is a health care leader. They are currently a mixed-methods health services researcher at NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) and an incoming Master of Health Administration (MHA) candidate at Johns Hopkins University. Through their current work and education, Chugani is exploring how to imbed systems of reciprocity in health care in order to make community-based, culturally-tailored health care more accessible to all. Chugani is particularly interested in reforming health care markets for nursing homes, hospice and palliative care, and gender-affirming care.

I’ve been a researcher at NORC since June 2022. My work at NORC focuses on evaluating value-based care models, Medicaid Section 1115 Waivers, and access to home- and community-based services for under-researched populations. I serve as a project manager and research task lead on teams that provide insights to state Medicaid implementors as well as federal health agencies. In addition to my experience at NORC, I have been a freelance health IT consultant and entrepreneur in the medical devices and health tech space since 2023, developing tools and services that empower end-users — be it providers, health administrators, or patients — with data to make more informed decisions.

Several personal experiences motivate my future career goals. Particularly, I am moved by how community members show up for each other when their neighbors, friends, and loved ones fall through the gaps in our health care system. I have seen so much goodness from community members both in the case of my grandparents when they immigrated to the United States and faced challenges in accessing high-quality, culturally-tailored care, as well as in the case of my transgender peers navigating the political turmoil surrounding gender-affirming care in Florida. At a high-level, my goal is to scale this goodness and make it as sustainable and robust as possible against the winds of policy change.