Director of Community Engagement
McCall Behavioral Health Network
Torrington, Connecticut
Lauren Pristo, MPH, is the Director of Community Engagement at McCall Behavioral Health Network. She serves as the Statewide Project Manager for the Community and Law Enforcement for Addiction Recovery (CLEAR) initiative and the Coordinator for the Litchfield County Opiate Task Force (LCOTF).
During her time at McCall, Lauren led the implementation and expansion of the first regional harm reduction program and an overdose spike alert response. She has also spearheaded the creation of multidisciplinary, first-responder and behavioral health deflection teams in western Connecticut. Additionally, she has coordinated a grassroots coalition addressing the root causes of addiction, including a regional multi-agency outreach and recovery coaching network, which have become nationally recognized models.
Lauren earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases from the Yale School of Public Health. For her thesis, she assessed the needs and barriers to care for people living with HIV, using epidemiological research methods to examine synergistic health and social conditions, including injection drug use. She earned her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Science with minors in Chemistry and Anthropology from Northern Arizona University where she co-authored immunology research on the infectious disease melioidosis at the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute.
Lauren has presented at multiple local, state, and national conferences on topics such as integrating harm reduction into treatment settings, police deflection pathways and partnering with harm reductionists, community partnerships and cross-sector addiction response efforts, the root causes of addiction, the impacts of trauma, rural behavioral health, and other subjects related to public and behavioral health surrounding the overdose crisis.
B13 - Navigating Politically Charged Environments
Monday, April 27, 2026
2:15 PM - 3:15 PM MDT