Title(s): Assistant Professor
Department: Health Management and Policy
Office: N236 CPHB
Phone: (319) 335-2833

Jenny McDonnell, PhD, MPH, is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa. As a medical sociologist with interdisciplinary training in public health and health services research, Dr. McDonnell is passionate about studying multi-level barriers to health care, with the goal of advancing the development and implementation of policy and interventions aimed at reducing inequities in health services and outcomes. Her research has received awards and funding from the American Society of Transplantation, the Center for Practical Bioethics, and Emory University among other groups. Her current research bridges theoretical frameworks and perspectives across various disciplines to explore how inequities in access to kidney transplantation are instantiated, promulgated, and contested through day-to-day organizational decisions and practices. Using a range of qualitative methods, her research focuses on how particular sociopolitical, institutional, and organizational arrangements shape the ways health care providers judge patients’ eligibility for transplant and make treatment allocation decisions in the context of organ scarcity.

Dr. McDonnell has also collaborated with interdisciplinary teams of health services researchers, health economists, and medical practitioners at Emory University, the Indiana University School of Medicine, and the Regenstrief Institute to investigate inequities in patients’ access to kidney transplant. Using data from the United States Renal Data System and surveys with dialysis care providers, this research examines population-level variation in providers’ patient assessment processes and how clinic-level factors may affect these processes. Additionally, Dr. McDonnell has worked in partnership with Medicare’s quality improvement contractor for the Southeast United States to disseminate key findings to patients living with end-stage kidney disease and their dialysis care providers. As her research agenda expands, Dr. McDonnell looks forward to building strong collaborations with researchers, health care practitioners, and community members with the goal of improving experiences of care for patients with chronic illnesses, advancing fairer patient treatment, allocation, and access to health resources, and expanding patient-centered care practices.

Dr. McDonnell received her Ph.D. in Sociology and M.P.H. in Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences from Emory University and Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia.