Catherine Dodd PhD RN Bio CA ONS legislative conference March 2024

Catherine has devoted herself and her nursing career to advocating for meaningful policies to improve health care and promote nursing as a solution to solving our health policy challenges. Her initial introduction to advocacy was in high school where she organized neighborhoods in her town to keep the student run recycling center open. She’s come full circle and today is an environmental health consultant after a lymphoma diagnosis related to exposure to Round Up resulted in a bone marrow transplant in 2013. In 2018 she contributed a chapter on Electromagnetic Smog to the 2^nd edition of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments e-text. She has also published several chapters in nursing texts about policy and politics, in 2013, she co-edited Health Policy: Crisis and Reform (6th Edition), a popular text for health professionals.

In 2023 she was one of three nurses to receive the first Nursing National DAISY award for advancing compassion through policy. 

As a young nurse Catherine chaired the Golden Gate Nurses Assn Govt Relations Committee where her introduction to the policy process was advocating for funding from Medi-Cal for prosthetic devices after mastectomy surgery. Later, Catherine would be the Director of Government Relations for the California Nurses Assn (part of ANA) and on the ANA PAC Board of Directors. Early in her experience she learned that policy and politics are inextricably linked. In 1987 she organized “Nurses for Pelosi” and after Nancy Pelosi’s election she was offered a position working on health and senior issues.  She would work for Speaker Emeritus Pelosi again after her tenure as an appointee of President Clinton to Director of Region IX Health and Human Services where she was responsible for representing HHS in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and the U.S. jurisdictions in the Western Pacific region. Catherine worked to elevate the profession in every state she visited and ensured that nurses were on key committees.

Catherine’s dissertation was on Hospice Care, and she received her PhD at UCSF in Sociology where she was a Health Policy Institute Fellow. Iin 2007 she worked for Mayor Gavin Newsom (now Governor) as deputy chief of staff for health and human services after serving on the San Francisco Health Commission overseeing a $1.3 billion budget. Before retiring in 2017 she directed the San Francisco Health Service System, where she negotiated and administered health benefits for more than 112,000 employees and retirees. In that role she insisted that the health insurers CCSF contracted with include Advanced Practice Nurses in their provider lists and she created a wellness program and center for employees and retirees, and she added infertility, gender affirming and palliative care to all contracts.

Catherine loves teaching nurses how to be effective advocates. She was part-time faculty in the graduate nursing program at SF State University teaching Policy and Politics. She is a frequent speaker on policy and politics. She cut her teeth, traveling throughout the country representing First Lady Hillary Clinton speaking on health care reform.

Catherine encourages nurses to be involved in campaigns even if they do not live in the candidate’s district by saying: “you can’t vote for them, but they will vote for you and for nursing.” She was a part of Rep Lois Capps RN’s(retired) first campaign and subsequent re-elections campaigns, and Rep Lauren Underwood RN’s initial and subsequent campaigns including her current one.  Since 2019 she’s been a core member of Nurses for America electing candidates to federal office who share nursing’s values. She is active in several nursing organizations, including ANA California, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the  Holistic Nurses Association, Sigma Theta Tau and Oncology Nursing Society. She presented posters at the ONS Congress in 2019 and 2020.  Inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 2003, she is active on the Public Health and the Environment Expert Panel and the Expert Panel on Aging. She is a core member of

Dr. Dodd encourages nurses to be involved in civic and community activities beyond their nursing organizations so the public will realize that we are valuable policy experts. Catherine’s involvement includes serving on the boards of directors of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She was a board member of the Breast Cancer Fund (now Breast Cancer Prevention Partners), a national environmental health advocacy organization focused on preventing environmental causes of breast cancer. She serves on the board of Commonweal an organization of healing, and environmental projects – there Catherine is involved with the Cancer Help Program, HealingCirclesGlobal.org where cofacilitates a weekly living with Cancer circle, and she is part of the core leadership of Healing Circles Healthcare which has trained close to 20,000 RNs to participate in healing circles in the workplace to find meaning in their work. She is part of the outreach for Commonweal’s CancerChoices.org a world renown website for patients, caregivers and health providers with curated information about complementary treatments for people with cancer.  She is a part-time consultant for Families Advocating for Chemical and Toxics Safety advocating for safer environments for children and Californians for Pesticide Reform advocating for protection for farmworkers and their communities from harmful and carcinogenic pesticides.