March 2025

Meet PaTH Patient Partner Greg Merritt

Very few people are given a second chance at life, but Greg Merritt considers every day following his out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in February 2012 to be the blessing of a second chance to live exactly as he intends. As it turns out, that means spending quality time with his family while seeing the world and using his experience and expertise to advocate for authentically engaged patient partnership in all aspects of health research and care. Greg has been a patient participant in research (for example, the ADAPTABLE aspirin dosing study and ACTIV-6 study of potential COVID-19 therapies) as well as a patient representative in the Learning Health System for Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest at the University of Michigan and the PaTH Network Hypertension Learning Community, where he provides a critical voice on behalf of patients who deserve to influence the aims, processes, and implementation of health research. He is an active member of the PCORnet Steering Committee and, starting in 2025, is also the Patient Co-Investigator for the PaTH Network.

Greg’s relentless pursuit of questions (and sometimes answers) helps any team he's on to consider important implications of the methods and aims of their work. He ponders, “What if, in 25 years, researchers sit around in amazement saying, ‘Can you believe we used to complete an entire life cycle of a research project WITHOUT patients as authentic partners giving their lived expertise in every phase of research?’ Let’s do this – together.”

Learn more about Greg and his “second life” mission at www.patientispartner.com.

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