Healthcare Experience (HEx) Lab Principal Investigator
Catherine H. Saunders, PhD, MPH
A Scientist at Dartmouth Health and an Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Health Policy & Clinical Practice at The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Katie is a mixed methods health services researcher focused on making the experience of serious illness better and easier to measure. She and her colleagues in the Healthcare Experience Lab (HEx Lab) work to develop, test, and implement innovations on behalf of patients, care partners, and clinicians.
Advancing Serious Illness Care Through Innovative Tools
Katie led the development and validation of a measure of serious illness care experience, called the consideRATE questions, which is used in both routine care and research here in the U.S. and internationally. She also led the team that developed the Serious Illness Topics agenda-setting intervention, a simple visual tool rooted in what matters most to patients, care partners, and clinicians. Katie is actively engaged in efforts to develop structured agenda-setting interventions like SIT for other populations and contexts, with plans to run randomized controlled trials to determine whether these types of interventions can help patients feel empowered and advocate for themselves.
Enhancing Research Rigor with Participatory Methods
Katie’s research is anchored in the belief that patients and their care partners are better off when they have a seat at the table and a voice in the discussion. So, her work also explores how innovative participatory methods can enhance the rigor, validity, accessibility, and equity of health services research. She originated the Practical Thematic Analysis approach to participatory qualitative data analysis, published in the BMJ in 2023. She has been invited to train others and speak about these approaches internationally, and she looks forward to further developing this line of work with colleagues at Dartmouth and across the world. She is also interested in developing the evidence base for the comparative effectiveness of different ways to engage patients and the public in research.
Fostering Collaboration to Improve Patient Experiences
As the Principal of Investigator of the HEx Lab, Katie finds joy in bringing together groups of people with different perspectives, including professional and personal perspectives. She is proud that the HEx Lab is an open, collaborative and curious environment filled will colleagues she respects and enjoys working with them to improve patient experiences.
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