KarenLutfey.com

Karen Lutfey is Senior Research Scientist at New England Research Institutes (NERI) in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she is Director of the Center on Patient-Provider Relationships and the Center for Qualitative Research. She also holds an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Sociology at Boston University. Lutfey's research is in the areas of medicine, health, and illness; health policy; clinical decision making; variations in medical practice; health disparities; and comorbid physical and mental illness. She is currently PI on a NIMH-funded R01 study of sources of stigma in primary care decision making in co-occurring mental and physical illness. She was also Co-PI (with Dr. John McKinlay) on a recently completed NIH-funded study of cognitive bias in physician decision making in coronary heart disease (CHD) and a collaborator on related decision making studies of diabetes, CHD, and depression. Her work has appeared in, among other outlets, American Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Science and Medicine, Sociology of Health and Illness, Medical Decision Making, Health Policy, and Health Services Research. She is on editorial/advisory boards for Sociology of Health and Illness and Health Expecations, a past editorial board member of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, has recently held offices in the American Sociological Association, and has memberships in the Eastern Sociological Society, International Sociological Association, and AcademyHealth. She has taught courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in medical sociology, social theory, social psychology, sociology of gender, and introduction to sociology.

Prior to joining NERI in 2005, Lutfey was Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota (2000-5) and a participant in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco (2002-4). She completed her PhD in sociology at Indiana University in 2000.