Patient and Activist, Lecturer, Trainer

After twenty years in the art market, Catherine Cerisey was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and relapsed two years later. At the end of 2009, by then in total remission, she started a blog on the disease “Après mon cancer du sein” (“After my breast cancer”) which quickly gained a wide following (2,500,000 views since its creation).

Soon after, she started working for the website “la maison du cancer” (the cancer house), and writing for Rose magazine, a newspaper dedicated to women with cancer.

A French patient advocate, she was Vice-President of Cancer Contribution, an association committed to democracy in healthcare, and is currently a member of the Boards of Directors of Europa Donna, the French branch of a European coalition that educates, brings together and supports women with breast cancer, of Etincelle, rebondir avec un cancer (Spark, bouncing back from cancer), an association that offers support care to patients, and Coopération Patients, an association whose objective is to encourage and promote reflection and exchanges in order to influence public debates and change health strategies, medical practices, and the organization of care in the field of chronic diseases.

She is very active on social media and regularly speaks at eHealth conferences and congresses.

She is a member of various working groups and steering committees, notably with learned societies and institutions (French Ministry of Solidarity and Health, Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), Institut National du Cancer (INCa), Association Francophone des Soins Oncologiques de Support (AFSOS), Fédération des Établissements Hospitaliers & d’Aide à la Personne Privés Non Lucratifs (FEHAP), Les Entreprises du Médicament (LEEM), Société Française de Radiologie (SFR)…), and has recently joined the expert committee of the Doctissimo website and the ethics committee of the Collège National des Généralistes Enseignants (CNGE).

She is involved in various university courses for MBA or Master of Public Health students (Institut Léonard de Vinci, Claude Bernard University in Lyon…). Since 2016, she has been teaching patient perspectives at the Sorbonne Paris Nord medical school to interns in general medicine.

At the end of 2012, she co-founded Patients & Web, a consulting agency that works in collaboration with all the players in the healthcare system. Her expertise enables her to co-design projects adapted to the reality of living with a chronic disease by taking into account the needs and uses of patients.

At the end of 2021, she co-founded EntendsMoi (Listen Up), a start-up that aims to help healthcare professionals, particularly healthcare institutions, by analyzing patients’ experiences through natural language processing, to improve patient care, but also to restore a sense of purpose to the healthcare profession and increase its attractiveness.