Biography
Carmit McMullen, PhD, is a medical anthropologist who studies health care delivery, cancer survivorship, and aging. She provides expertise in qualitative and ethnographic research methods, such as focus groups, interviews, and fieldwork (participant-observation), for studies in diverse subject areas.
Dr. McMullen has used ethnography to study how health care providers across the country communicate in hospital and outpatient settings, ensure patient safety during surgery and critical care, and implement electronic medical records systems. She has developed rapid assessment processes for conducting team-based ethnographic evaluations of organizational change in health care settings.
Dr. McMullen is establishing a research program on treatment-related disability among cancer survivors. Some of these survivorship studies examine long-term colorectal cancer survivors with stomas, and she is leading an NCI study on caregiving for cancer survivors. As a Cancer Research Network Scholar, she completed an 18-month training program for promising early-career investigators at HMO-affiliated research centers nationwide.
Dr. McMullen received her MA and PhD in medical anthropology from Case Western Reserve University. Her earlier research examined self-appraised health status, African American culture and health, and urban health issues in three community-based, anthropological studies of health and aging in Philadelphia. She is an affiliate assistant professor in OHSU's Department of Medical Informatics.