Investigator General Internal Medicine, Mass General Research Institute

Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School

breast neoplasms; decision making; decision support techniques; goals; health knowledge, attitudes, practice; mastectomy; patient education as topic; patient participation; patient-centered care

Karen Sepuch, PhD, a is the director of the Health Decision Sciences Center in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research and clinical interests focus on promoting shared decision making. 

Dr. Sepucha has considerable expertise in the development and evaluation of patient decision aids (PtDAs). In addition, Dr. Sepucha has led the effforts to implement PtDAs locally across Mass General Brigham and nationally.  Her research has also focused on the development of Shared Decision Making Process survey and more than a dozen decision quality instruments. The surveys have been used in national surveys of medical decisions, a subset of the items have been adapted for use in the CAHPS primary care medical home patient experience survey, and two performance measures have been endorsed by the Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM).

Dr. Sepucha has been active in local, national and international efforts to improve decision quality, including the steering committee of the International Patient Decision Aids Standards collaboration. She received her Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research at Stanford University with a focus in decision sciences.