Katharine Dodd was educated at Bryn Mawr College and received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1921. She served as Assistant professor and later as Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt from 1925 to 1944. From 1944 to 1952, Dodd was Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Fellow of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Research Foundation, and in 1952, she was named Professor and Head of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas Medical Center. Dodd was called to the University of Louisville School of Medicine in 1957, where for three years she was Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics. At the time of her deth in 1965, Dodd was Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

In 1947, Dr. Dodd and a team from the U.S. Public Health Service succeeded in finding the cause of Ekiri, a childhood deficiency disease that was ravaging Japan at the time. Her later years were marked by numerous awards and honors.