Nina Owcharenko Schaefer is a senior research fellow in health policy at the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity.

Previously, Schaefer served in the Trump Administration as Senior Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In that high-level capacity, Schaefer advanced Presidential and Secretary policy priorities at the agency, including managing the development of the HHS response to the opioid abuse crisis.

Schaefer is a studied expert on health care reform on both the federal and state levels. She has researched and advised on health reform, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and prescription drugs.

She is well known in Washington policy circles as a champion of patient choice and robust competition in America’s health insurance markets.

Schaefer received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1994. Originally from Charlotte, N.C., she currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son.