Katherine Boothe

Katherine Boothe studies health and social policy in mature welfare states, with a focus on public and patient engagement in health policy and the ways evidence is constructed and used by different actors in the health policy arena. Her 2015 book, Ideas and the Pace of Change (UTP), compares the development of public pharmaceutical insurance programs in Canada, Australia, and the UK to explain Canada’s lack of broad public pharmaceutical insurance. Katherine's research has been published in Healthcare Policy, the Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science, among others. Her current research focuses on the role of ideas about evidence and legitimacy in health policy decisions, especially during times of crisis.

Katherine is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and a member of the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University. She earned her PhD in political science from the University of British Columbia.