Catherine Stratton

Catherine Stratton is an Epidemiology PhD student at the University of Toronto and a recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award.

Catherine’s doctoral research focuses on improving the methods for developing, implementing, and utilizing rare disease patient registries. She will use novel methods to engage patient partners, caregivers, and other knowledge users throughout the research process in order to gather richer evidence about rare disease registries. Catherine completed a Master of Public Health in Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale University.
For her Master’s thesis, she developed a paediatric pain assessment questionnaire, which is used at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), by applying patient and family preferences. Catherine is a Board Director and the Research Chair for the MoyaMoya Foundation Co.

In this position, she has created the Global Moyamoya Patient Registry to optimize the available data about this rare disease. Catherine serves on the International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine’s Task Force on Physical Activity for Persons with Disabilities where she has done research regarding disability and accessibility with a multinational and interdisciplinary team.

Catherine has volunteered over 1000 hours at SickKids to provide recreational outlets for patients and respite for families. 
Catherine admires the Program’s leadership training of Scholars to engage widely and deeply, to include impacted communities, and to democratize knowledge development as these are key features of the methods Catherine will employ in her doctoral research.