Catherine Koola Fischer, MPH

Director, Patient Engagement

Cat serves as ICER’s Director of Patient Engagement and is committed to strengthening the patient voice within ICER value assessments.  Her role includes conducting outreach and onboarding for ICER reviews, nurturing relationships with patient community partners, and enhancing ICER’s resources to be more patient-friendly. Cat serves as the Co-Chair of ICER’s Patient Council which was formally launched in July of 2023. In addition, Cat is also a Steering Committee member of HTAi’s Patient and Citizen Involvement Interest Group (PCIG) as well as the US HTA representative for the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC)’s Health Economics Patient Value (HEPV)’s Patient Preference Research working group. Cat’s tenure at ICER began in 2019 as a Program Manager leading ICER’s independent drug reviews, followed by her transition to the Patient Engagement team in 2021.

Prior to her work at ICER, Cat served as a Product Manager at Affect Mental Health, a Boston-based start-up focused on reducing stigma around mental health disorders and identifying opportunities to improve quality of and access to care.  Previous to that, she worked as a clinical research epidemiologist at Trauma Research, LLC, where she conducted research on the clinical practices of trauma hospitals and coordinated the activities of a multidisciplinary team.

Cat has her MPH in Epidemiology from Emory University and her BS in Psychology from Texas A&M University. She currently resides in Louisville, Colorado.