RATHKOPF
Close the Lived Experience Gap.
RATHKOPF is a patient- and caregiver-led insight and documentary storytelling studio.
We help healthcare organizations make better decisions by uncovering the lived experience traditional research often misses and turn it into the insights, strategy, and stories that build trust and improve decisions.
Trusted By
Organizations have more data than ever.
What they often lack is proximity to the people they serve.
What is the
“Lived Experience Gap”?
The distance between what healthcare measures and what people actually live.
It affects trust.
Adoption.
Organizational credibility.
Quality of care.
That's where we work.
The FDA now enforces the use of patient-focused drug development data. Closing that gap isn't optional anymore.
Most healthcare storytelling gets built around patients.
Ours gets built with them.
Why organizations bring us in
Not just to make another patient video.
To answer questions they can't answer from dashboards, surveys, advisory boards, or traditional research alone.
We work alongside patients and caregivers to uncover the lived experience behind the data—then translate those insights into strategies, communications, and documentary storytelling that people trust.
How We Work
Every engagement begins with understanding.
Because better stories—and better decisions—start long before the camera rolls.
① DISCOVER
Lived Experience Discovery
Identify the people, experiences, and unanswered questions that matter most.
② UNDERSTAND
Patient Insight
Conduct interviews and fieldwork to uncover what traditional research often misses.
③ TRANSLATE
Visual Insight
Transform findings into clear insights and recommendations teams can use.
④ CREATE
Storytelling & Production
Produce documentary films, photography, educational content, and campaigns grounded in those insights.
OUR WHY
When Anna Rathkopf was diagnosed with cancer, we picked up our cameras to make sense of what we were living through.
That work became internationally recognized—but it also revealed something much bigger.
Healthcare often understands disease better than it understands the experience of living with it.
That realization became the foundation of our studio.
Today, a network of lived-experience partners works alongside us on the same premise: the people who know best are the people who live it.
CASE STUDY
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Medical Affairs • Depression Care • NCI-funded research
The questions we help organizations answer.
How are patients actually experiencing care?
Where are we losing trust?
What barriers aren't showing up in surveys?
How do caregivers experience this differently?
Why aren't patients engaging?
What story needs to be told before we build the campaign?
Why this matters now.
Patient experience is no longer optional.
Organizations face increasing expectations—from regulators, healthcare professionals, patients, and communities—to understand how care is actually experienced.
Frameworks such as the FDA's Patient-Focused Drug Development initiative reflect that shift.
Understanding lived experience isn't just better storytelling.
It's becoming better healthcare.
Let's understand what your patients are living—not just what your data is measuring.
Let's talk before you decide what to build.