Sarah Savić Kallesøe

Sarah Savić Kallesøe joined Ethox in 2022 as a DPhil student in Population Health.

Her research focuses on how “public trust in healthcare systems” is understood and measured. She has particular expertise in the study of trust in healthcare, bringing together philosophical work on trust with empirical public health research. Her work examines whether we are actually measuring what we think we are when we talk about “trust,” and how different approaches define and operationalise concepts such as trust, confidence, and public attitudes. While much of the existing research treats trust as a general attitude or level of confidence, philosophical accounts describe it as a more specific kind of relationship involving expectations, vulnerability, and responsibility. By comparing these approaches, her work highlights where they do not fully align and explores what this means for how we interpret and rely on measures of trust in healthcare systems.

Prior to joining Ethox, Sarah worked in pandemic response with the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH) in Vancouver, Canada alongside the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Her work focused on SARS-CoV-2 outbreak investigation and surveillance, harmonising Canadian SARS-CoV-2 patient data, and investigating the gaps of national patient data-sharing infrastructure models.

In 2020, she completed her MPhil in Public Health at the University of Cambridge (St Catharine’s College, m. 2019). Her BSc at Simon Fraser University (SFU) focused on access to health services among refugees in Canada and the United States. She was named British Columbia’s Rhodes Scholar Finalist in 2019 and 2020.

Outside of research, you can find her in the wild (quite literally), sailing the Canadian West Coast, camping, reading in her travel hammock, and star gazing. She is an avid stargazer and works as a public outreach astronomer and researcher with the SFU Trottier Observatory.