Jodie Katon, a research assistant professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health, is a new editorial board member of Women’s Health Issues, the official journal of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health, based at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
Katon is a health services researcher trained in epidemiology whose work focuses on reproductive health and health equity. She is a research health scientist specialist at the Veterans Administration (VA) Puget Sound Health Care System and a core investigator at the VA Puget Sound’s Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care. In a project funded by a HSR&D Career Development Award, Katon is working to understand access to and utilization of VA maternity care for women Veterans, and their health outcomes. This study will help identify modifiable risk factors and acceptable virtual care strategies for enhancing care and improving outcomes for Veterans who are pregnant.
Additionally, Katon is co-principal investigator of a study to understand racial and ethnic disparities in uterine fibroid outcomes among women Veterans, and she leads the national VA Reproductive Health Work Group as part of the HSR&D-funded Women’s Health Research Network. She previously served as a senior reproductive epidemiology consultant for the VA Office of Women's Health Services, helping to lead the first-ever report on the State of Reproductive Health in Women Veterans.
Katon earned her PhD in epidemiology from the UW School of Public Health and her master’s in epidemiology from the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California Los Angeles. Following her graduate studies, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the VA Puget Sound HSR&D Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value Driven Care.