International Health Humanities Network Membership

Sarah E. Kucharski is a consultant, public speaker and advocate fostering the patient voice in medicine through design thinking for innovation and social media. Her special interests include patient engagement, the patient experience, the doctor-patient relationship, the patient-caregiver relationship, chronic illness, clinical trials and health literacy. She has a B.A. in journalism, a M.A. in liberal studies and a certificate from Columbia University's Narrative Medicine program. 

She also is CEO/Chairman and Founder of FMD Chat, a nonprofit medical organization, and Coordinator of ePatient Programs for Medicine X at Stanford University. As FMD Chat's leader, she oversees the organization's mission and financial objectives; fundraising; publicity and media relations; domestic and international partnerships; volunteer recruitment and development. For Medicine X, she manages the health care and emerging technology conference's ePatient scholarship program and has served on the ePatient Advisory Board since 2012.

Her speaking engagements have included MedCity News' ENGAGE conference in Washington, D.C. (panelist); Doctors 2.0 & You, a healthcare and social media conference in Paris, France (individual presenter and panelist); BC Kidney Days in Vancouver, Canada (individual presenter); Medicine X 2012, 2013, 2014 (individual presenter, panelist and moderator). She also has partnered with medical school faculty at Stanford and UC Irvine to speak to med school students about the ePatient experience and facilitated design-thinking sessions with cardiac health providers at Bon Secours Richmond. Her additional conference and workshop participation includes HealthCamp DC (2012); Partnership With Patients (2012); HealthCamp Kansas City (2012); ScienceOnline (2013); Rare Disease Day at the National Institutes of Health (2013, 2014); Eli Lilly's Patients at the Center of Clinical Trials Workshop (2013); Healthcare Quality Conference H2T Humanizing Healthcare Technologies (2014).

Her work has been recognized with a 2014 RARE Champion of Hope Nomination for Collaborations in Advocacy; Health Advocate Award nominations from Wego Health; state newspaper and international blog articles; scholarships in 2013 and 2014 to participate in Congressional lobbying on behalf of the rare disease community; and a 2011 scholarship to Medicine 2.0 at Stanford University. 

Also, Kucharski is an award-winning writer and managing editor of Smoky Mountain Living, a nationally-published, regional lifestyle magazine covering Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, North Georgia, and Southwest Virginia. She is responsible for the magazine's overall editorial concept and content in addition to business operations including freelancer relations, marketing, sponsorships, and social media.