Dr. Fennell is the Chair of the Department of Sociology, and is also appointed in the Department of Community Health. She is a senior investigator with the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, where her research focus is on the connections between the acute and long term care systems of care. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and specializes in the application of organizational theory to health care organizations. She has led or collaborated on more than a dozen externally-funded research projects in the areas of organizational change in health care, innovation diffusion, professional careers, interorganizational linkage and alliance formation in health care. She has funding from NIA to examine the linkage between hospitals and nursing homes in rural settings. Using SEER/Medicare matched data, and with funding from NCI, Dr. Fennell (along with Linda Laliberte) have studied the impact of living in an area covered by cooperative cancer treatment programs on the extent to which older women with newly-diagnosed breast cancer receive "standard" therapy. Another recent project (funded by AHRQ) was a study of variation in nursing home quality of care and variation in racial/ethnic disparities in care quality as a function of nursing home structure and care process and of community context. Her current research continues that line of inquiry by proposing an analysis of the influence of nursing home market structure and state regulatory intensity on disparities in nursing home access and disparities in the quality of care within nursing homes. She collaborates extensively with Dr. Mor, Dr. Intrator, Dr. Miller, Linda Laliberte, and Dr. Gatsonis, and works with graduate students specializing in health care organizations. From 2000 through 2004, Dr. Fennell served Brown University as Dean of the Faculty.

Click here for Dr. Fennell's Rural Hospital Project at Brown University.

Rural Hospital Project

Book:

Professional Work: A Sociological Approach, with Kevin Leicht. 2001. Blackwell Publishers, London and New York, 254 pp.

Publications:

"The Relationship of Membership in Research Networks to Compliance with Treatment Guidelines for Early Stage Breast Cancer," with Linda Laliberte and George Papandonatas. 2005, Medical Care," 43:4, 471-479.

Linkages in the Rural Continuum: The Balanced Budget Act and Beyond," with Joseph Angelelli, Ray Hyatt, and Joyce McKenney. 2003, The Gerontologist, Vol.43, No.2, 54-60.

"Health Care Delivery Services," in: Smelser, N., Baltes, P. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences 2002, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, Vol.10, pp 6515-6520.

Leicht, KT and Fennell ML. (2001) Professional Work: A Sociological Analysis . Blackwell Publishers. 254 pp.

"Hospital Diversification into Long-Term Care," with Ann (Petrisek) Shah and Vince Mor. Summer 2001, Health Care Management Review, 86-100.

"Community-Based Service Providers for People with Chronic Care Needs," with Susan Allen and Linda LaLiberte. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, The Organizational Response to Social Problems, (2001) Vol.8. Elsevier Science. Pp. 43-57.

"Facility Effects on Racial Differences in Nursing Home Quality of Care," with Susan Miller and Vince Mor. American Journal of Medical Quality. (July-August 2000) Vol.15, No.4: 174-181.

"Key challenges in studying organizational issues in the delivery of health care to older Americans," with A. B. Flood. 1998, Health Services Research, 33:2, Part II

Fennell ML and Flood AB. (1998): Key challenges in studying organizational issues in the delivery of health care to older Americans. Health Services Research, 33:2, Part II.

Leicht KT and Fennell ML. (1997): The changing organizational context of professional work. Annual Review of Sociology, 23:215-31.

Committee on Maintaining Privacy and Security in Health Care Applications of the National Information Infrastructure. (1997): For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information. National Academy Press. 288 pp.

Fennell ML and Pescosolido BA, (Eds). (Special Issue, 1995): Forty Years of Medical Sociology. Journal of Health and Social Behavior.