Catherine Saunders, PhD, MPH

Catherine Saunders is a health services researcher focused on empowering patients with good communication. She learned the power of good communication as a healthcare communications consultant. In that role, she helped translate complex health information, such as trends in vaccine-refusal rates, into language regular people could understand.

Her current work focuses on care and communication when people are seriously ill—a time when communication is more difficult and coupled with complex, emotion-laden decision making. She is currently developing a measure of serious illness experience, called consideRATE, and a conversation guide to help people who are seriously ill and their families have more meaningful conversations with their care teams.

Saunders’ long-term research goal is to challenge assumptions about the patient experience, drawing on knowledge and techniques from across disciplines and leveraging learnings from the most difficult populations, those with serious illnesses and older adults.

She was honored with the Henry Masters Award for spirit and passion in efforts to improve health and healthcare and make a lasting difference, especially for underserved populations. She was also a part of a team that received both the North American Platinum SABRE award and Global SABRE award for its work in the aftermath of the first Ebola case in the United States.

In 2016 Saunders received an MPH from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, followed by a PhD in 2019. She earned a BA in Sociology/Anthropology from Middlebury College.