Veronica Lopez Gousset | DrPH candidate
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Veronica Lopez Gousset, MPH, has over 10 years of experience ensuring patients’ voices are represented in healthcare decision-making. She works with the patient community to better voice their needs and challenges, with health technology assessment (HTA) bodies to improve their processes for citizen and patient involvement, and with the pharmaceutical industry to inform research and commercialization plans based on patient priorities. By incorporating the patient perspective, Veronica aims to achieve better health outcomes and greater equity in coverage and access. Veronica founded VLG Consulting in 2020 to drive multi-stakeholder initiatives toward patient-centered healthcare change. Her work includes developing and delivering capability-building courses for patient communities on topics such as their role in medical product development and access, how to engage with decision-makers, and the importance of international collaborations. She guided the creation of a regional patient group alliance at the European level and is currently supporting the development of a regional advocacy strategy to advance the goals of the rare disease community.    She trains HTA bodies on incorporating the patient perspective into their processes and has presented and published on evaluating the impact of this engagement. She is now kicking off an effort under HTAi’s Patient and Citizen Involvement Interest Group (PCIG) to operationalize the published framework across HTA bodies and contexts. She is a Steering Committee member of HTAi’s Rare Disease Interest Group and a Vice-Chair of HTAi’s Early Career Network. Veronica has an MPH with a concentration in health policy from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and is pursuing a DrPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through the DrPH program, Veronica intends to scale this work and aspires to guide health systems in achieving universal health coverage through equity-driven engagement with the patient community.