Summer Wadsworth is a patient partner for a PCORI-funded project testing treatments for hepatitis C. She has been involved with PCORI-funded studies as a patient partner since 2013.

Wadsworth was diagnosed with hepatitis C in the mid-1980s. At the time, she decided to forgo treatment after doctors informed her of the treatments’ harsh side effects and poor success rates. Wadsworth’s youth and health, with no outward signs of liver disease, made her and her doctor decide that the risks of treatments outweigh the benefits. In 2013, she decided to seek treatment, which rid her of the virus.

Around the same time, after a few years of volunteering for a theater program at her daughter’s middle school, she started a theater program in her local high school and was hired as a full-time faculty member.