Shaping the Future of Healthcare Through Empathy and Cutting-Edge Solutions
The literal definition of a superwoman, Dr. Katharina C Mahadeva Cadwell is a physician with a medical degree from Germany. She is an Internal Medicine and Palliative Care specialist with clinical practice in underserved rural areas in the US, inner-city hospitals, and inpatient end-of-life care. She believes that if you put your mind to something, then half the battle is won. Her life exemplifies truly believing in oneself and a pure heart that can change lives.
She has been instrumental in building a rural track residency program through the UNLV Family Medicine Residency training program and taught and mentored residents and students there for seven years. She feels that being a Stanford LEAD graduate led her to develop her current business idea, even being featured in the Stanford LEAD quarterly 2023 winter edition.
Katharina has also been a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach since 2023; her emotional eating certification is in progress. Since 2010, she has also given many professional lectures and presentations to other healthcare professionals through ACP (American College of Physicians), Project ECHO Palliative Care, and Indian Health Services. She has also recently concluded a literature review research paper on pre-diabetes management with students at the University of Applied Sciences NW Switzerland in Zurich together with renowned digital researcher Dr. Christine Jacob, PhD.
Currently, she is building phase 1 of her pre-diabetes program, a 1:1 coaching model to help patients/clients make gradual, meaningful and sustainable lifestyle changes through an individualized approach, using Blue Zone principles and research-based behavior strategies. Phase 2 of the project will entail combining data derived from coaching with the data from the university collaboration (digital health research dept) to develop a gen AI program/app to make coaching for lifestyle as medicine approach accessible to more people in an easy way, based on best available data, integrates personal data, and functions as their AI coach.
For her, the greatest challenge to help others is to bridge the gaps in healthcare, which effectively and meaningfully impacts lifestyle support for patients and the huge role it plays in preventing chronic disease. She says, “We are seeing this emerge in many newer applications and programs, including data integration and personal coaching, but it isn’t widely accepted. Coaching is mostly an added benefit for patients who already have a chronic disease and are enrolling in a program to address the disease instead of utilizing this approach before the disease happens.”
Katharina recalls being a 4th grader sitting in front of a tube TV discovering Star Trek for the first time, in a time when the Cold War was still very much hot, in a place where the adults were surviving by keeping their heads down, not sticking out with any new ideas. She was suddenly introduced to a world of ‘can do’, of teamwork, of diverse people overcoming differences, coming together for a shared, common goal they were all passionate about. She felt overjoyed when she found this in real life as she stepped out into the world to explore it and discover the opportunities for change and innovation.
Passionate about helping others, Katharina strives to build something that would effectively benefit many people’s lives so they can enjoy a life of good health and vitality. Healing illness and mitigating suffering are some of her main overarching goals, which she wishes to accomplish through her business. She reiterates, “As a physician-leader and mentor, I want to instill this attitude of collaboration and respectful autonomy in my younger colleagues, an understanding of patient empowerment and empathy-led leadership.”
A firm believer in hard work over luck, she still believes in serendipity and feels that if you are focused on a goal for the right reasons, with the right values, the hard work will pay off. That you will eventually expand your network and have a like-minded tribe who will help with the heavy lifting. She mentions that monumental work is always done with others as a team, even though an idea may be conceived alone.
For her, leadership means being a role model and coach to the ones looking at her for direct or indirect guidance. She remarks, “As a leader, we have a great responsibility to model empathy in leadership that encompasses basic human values such as respect, embracing different perspectives, and understanding our roles and others’ roles within the context of a larger system and also in the context of their own life experiences and “baggage”. In a sense, a good leader models both leading and being a team player.”
Katharina has been bestowed with numerous accolades for her illustrious accomplishments, including the 1st place presentation of a clinical case in ACP Nevada Chapter 2010, featured in Stanford LEAD Quarterly 2023 Winter edition, Influential Leadership in Healthcare Award at HeAL Conference 2024 and Executive Contributor to Brainz magazine since May 2024. She was also invited to ABIM (American Board of Internal Medicine) to review the board certification exam and scoring.