Suz Schrandt is a patient and patient engagement engineer with a health and disability law and policy background.  She is the Founder and CEO of ExPPect, a patient engagement initiative focused on improving healthcare and research through the expertise and partnership of skilled patient partners.  Schrandt previously served as the Director of Patient Engagement at the Arthritis Foundation and as the Deputy Director of Patient Engagement for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI); in both capacities she led the development and execution of patient engagement strategies to support research, medical product development, care delivery, and other innovation.

Before joining PCORI, Schrandt served as the Health Reform Team Leader for the Kansas Health Institute and she has held roles in bioethics, the study of genetic discrimination, and chronic disease self-management, as well as patient-led clinical training aimed at increasing early diagnosis and appropriate, patient-centered management of chronic disease. Schrandt’s passion for patient engagement began in large part from her own experience, having been diagnosed with polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis as a teenager, several years before the first biologics were available.  She has undergone multiple joint replacement and other orthopedic surgeries and has logged nearly thirty years of first-hand experience with the healthcare system. 

Schrandt is one of nine voting members on the FDA’s inaugural Patient Engagement Advisory Committee.  She has been the Chairperson for the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) North American Patient Representative Roundtable since 2016, co-chaired the Patients as Partners conference from 2016 to 2018, and has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences.  Schrandt received her law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law and has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles on the value and importance of patient engagement.