Marlaine Figueroa Gray, PhD

Biography

Marlaine Figueroa 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 no medical treatments are available.

Her previous work includes examining education policy in sub-Saharan Africa and developing curricula for health education, specifically HIV/AIDS education in Kenya and Mozambique.

Dr. Figueroa Gray has extensive experience designing qualitative studies and analyzing qualitative data. At Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI), she uses this expertise to examine how patients, family members, and physicians make medical decisions when outcomes are uncertain and stakes are high, such as deciding whether or not to participate in an immunotherapy trial, or choosing which treatments to pursue as an adolescent or young adult with advanced cancer. She founded the KPWHRI Qualitative Research Interest Group, which supports outstanding qualitative research at the institute.

RESEARCH INTERESTS AND EXPERIENCE

Child & Adolescent Health
Social Determinants of Health
Complementary & Integrative Health
Implementation of alternative healing programs in U.S. hospitals; patient and provider experience of alternative healing programs
Medical Education
Use of the arts in medical education; history of medical education; medical school curriculum development
Cancer Care and End of Life Care
Oncology support and care; end of life decision making
Integrative Medicine and Arts in Healing Programs
Participant experience; benefits; values and funding; legacy projects
Patient-Centered Care

Shared decision making; care logics
Global Health
HIV/AIDS education; maternal and child health; sub-Saharan Africa

Recent publications

Shapiro LN, Gray MF, Freitag C, Taneja P, Kariya H, Crane PK, O'Hare AM, Vig EK, Taylor JS Expanding the ethnographic toolkit: Using medical documents to include kinless older adults living with dementia in qualitative research 2023 Jun;65:101140. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101140. Epub 2023-05-10. PubMed

Evers S, Hsu C, Gray MF, Chisolm DJ, Dolcé M, Autio K, Thompson EE, Ervin E, Quintana LM, Beck A, Hansell L, Penfold R Decision-making among adolescents prescribed antipsychotic medications: Interviews to gain perspectives of youth without psychosis or mania 2023 Apr;28(2):683-696. doi: 10.1177/13591045221105197. Epub 2022-06-12. PubMed

Higashi RT, Kruse G, Richards J, Sood A, Chen PM, Quirk L, Kramer J, Tiro JA, Tuzzio L, Haas JS, Gray MF, Lee SC Harmonizing Qualitative Data Across Multiple Health Systems to Identify Quality Improvement Interventions: A Methodological Framework Using PROSPR II Cervical Research Center Data as Exemplar 2023 Jan;22. doi: 10.1177/16094069231157345. Epub 2023-02-14. PubMed

Blasi PR, Scrol A, Anderson ML, Gray MF, Tiffany B, Fullerton SM, Ralston JD, Leppig KA, Henrikson NB Feasibility, acceptability, and limited efficacy of health system-led familial risk notification: protocol for a mixed-methods evaluation 2022 Aug 9;8(1):174. doi: 10.1186/s40814-022-01142-9. Epub 2022-08-09. PubMed

Palazzo L, Hsu C, Barnes DE, Gray MF, Greenwood-Hickman MA, Larson EB, Dublin S Patient and caregiver perspectives on a tool to increase recognition of undiagnosed dementia: a qualitative study 2021 Oct 26;21(1):604. doi: 10.1186/s12877-021-02523-0. Epub 2021-10-26. PubMed