Biography
Marlaine Gray, PhD, is a medical anthropologist with a passion for eliciting illness narratives and health care experiences from patients, family members and medical professionals. She has researched how the intersection of creative practices and medical care provide insight into understanding the logic of biomedical care, what counts as evidence that a creative activity "works," and how arts activities can serve as a model of how to provide better, more patient-and-family centered care. She is particularly interested in how we attend to patient suffering, and in what types of care are possible when there are no medical treatments available.
Her previous work as a sociocultural graduate student in the UW department of Anthropology includes examining education policy in sub-Saharan Africa and developing curricula for health education, specifically HIV/AIDS education in Kenya and Mozambique.
Dr. Gray has extensive experience analyzing qualitative data. At Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI), she uses this expertise to examine how patients, family members and physicians conceptualize "ideal" or patient-and-family centered care, medication decision making during pregnancy, and medical decision making by young adults with advanced cancer.
Dr. Gray is also a member of KPWHRI's Center for Community Health and Evaluation(CCHE), where she uses her expertise to evaluate clinical care and vaccination initiatives.