Catherine Dawson, MD

Assistant Professor, Medicine

Catherine Dawson
781.687.2000
72 E. Concord Street

Biography

Dr. Dawson is a geriatric medicine physician and geriatrics education researcher at the VHA New England Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Center (NE GRECC) and an Assistant Professor in the Section of Geriatrics at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

Dr. Dawson’s education scholarship is focused on characterizing the current state of geriatrics education for medical students on a nationwide scale. She has co-founded Project EDGE (Education in Geriatrics) and launched a multi-phase study investigating geriatrics curricula at US medical schools. She has worked on the recent update of the Minimum Geriatrics Competencies for Medical Students along with the American Geriatrics Society Working Group, and she has also co-authored a book chapter on “The Landscape of Geriatrics Medical Education: Past, Present, and Future” in the Springer textbook “Medical Education in Geriatrics: Strategies for teaching the care of older adults.”

Dr. Dawson serves as the Medical Director of the VA Bedford Geriatrics Interprofessional Consult Clinic, which co-manages Veterans longitudinally along with their primary care teams in the outpatient setting. The Geriatrics Interprofessional Consult Clinic embraces the Patient Priorities Care approach and has received Age Friendly Level 2 Certification.

Dr. Dawson has received funding for multiple quality improvement initiatives through the VA Geriatrics and Extended Care (GEC) Mentored Partnership Program for Patient Priorities Care, the VA Office of Health Equity, and VA GEC – GRECC Clinical Innovation Funding. She is currently leading a team of experts to create and disseminate Veteran-facing videos illustrating how patient-identified goals can guide care plans and why it is important to discuss “what matters most”: https://tinyurl.com/mattersmost-videos

Training: Dr. Dawson was accepted into Brown University’s eight year medical program, the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), and she graduated medical school at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University with a Scholarly Concentration in Medical Education. Dr. Dawson matched into the Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency, with her longitudinal clinic at the West Haven VA Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE), and graduated in the Clinician Educator Distinction Pathway. Dr. Dawson then pursued a one-year clinical fellowship at Yale’s Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program. This clinical fellowship was followed by two years of advanced fellowship training in Boston, where she completed the Advanced Fellowship in Geriatric Medical Education at New England GRECC and, concurrently, the Clinician Educator Track for Fellows at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School Academy Medical Education Research Fellowship.

Additional information & honors listing can be found on Dr. Dawson’s BU profile: https://profiles.bu.edu/Catherine.Dawson
Preferred contact: Please feel free to reach out to Dr. Dawson at catherine.dawson@va.gov for questions about collaboration or mentoring.

Publications

  • Published on 1/1/2024

    Dawson CMP, Granville LJ, Sehgal M. In: Schwartz, AW, Ed. Medical Education in Geriatrics: Strategies for teaching the care of older adults. The Landscape of Geriatrics Medical Education: Past, Present, and Future. Springer Publishing. 2024.

  • Published on 9/9/2022

    Dawson CMP, Abiola AO, Sullivan AM, Schwartz AW. You can't be what you can't see: A systematic website review of Geriatrics Online-Visibility at US medical schools. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2022 Oct; 70(10):2996-3005. PMID: 36082829.

    Read at: PubMed
  • Published on 10/22/2021

    Hawley CE, Doherty K, Moye J, Phillips SC, Ngoc Phung ET, Dawson CMP, Schwartz AW. Implementing an interprofessional workshop based on the 4Ms for an age-friendly health system. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2021 12; 69(12):E27-E30. PMID: 34610145.

    Read at: PubMed
  • Published on 8/1/2020

    Dawson CM, Schwartz AW, Farrell SE. A Telehealth clinical skills education adaptation. Clin Teach. 2020 08; 17(4):437-439. PMID: 33189095.

    Read at: PubMed
  • Published on 2/6/2019

    Dawson CMP, Cooney LM. Access to Care for Older Adults: An Insurmountable Flight of Stairs? J Am Geriatr Soc. 2019 Apr; 67(4):663-664. PMID: 30726564.

    Read at: PubMed

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