Patti Katz , PhD
Professor of Medicine and Health Policy

Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
3333 California Street, Suite 270
San Francisco, CA 94118
patti.katz@ucsf.edu
415-476-5971
Fax: 415-476-9030

Pub Med Search: Katz PP

• functional and psychosocial outcomes of arthritis
• examining and defining disability
• relationship between disability and depression

Patti Katz, Ph.D., is Professor in Residence in the Department of Medicine at UCSF. She joined UCSF in 1986, first working with Jon Showstack, PhD, and then joining the faculty in 1993.
Dr. Katz’s earlier research focused on costs and resource use associated with specific conditions and technologies, and on outcomes research and evaluation. She collaborated on projects investigating the costs of kidney and liver transplantation, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, neonatal care, and asthma, and also engaged in research that assessed health care quality and outcomes, the impact of hospitalist systems and variations in health insurance on health outcomes. She was Associate Director of a Program Project (P01) funded by NIH (NICHD) entitled, “Individual, Family, and Societal Outcomes of Infertility,” and was Principal Investigator of a project entitled, “Economic and Social Costs of Infertility” within the P01.

For the past decade Dr. Katz’s research has focused on disability in chronic disease and the ways individuals adapt to chronic illness. This work has examined the development of disability in life activities and the role of functional decline, defined both traditionally and to include a broader range of life activities, as a risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms. She has received NIH funding to examine the relationship of different ways of coping with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to functional decline, health status, and health care utilization; parenting disability and psychological well-being among individuals with RA; and disability in valued life activities and psychological outcomes among persons with RA and lung disease. She has used this work to develop a theoretical model of disability and distress and to provide supporting evidence for this model. Most recently, she has received funding to examine the role of body composition in development of disability among individuals with RA and lupus.