KarenLutfey.com

Karen Lutfey is Director of the Center on Patient-Provider Relationships and Senior Research Scientist at New England Research Institutes (NERI) in Watertown, Massachusetts and 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 primary care decision making. She is also Co-PI on an NIH-funded study of 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 the editorial board of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, holds office 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.