Jenny McDonnellGraduate Student

• MA in Sociology, Emory University, 2021
• BS in Sociology, Kennesaw State University, 2011

• Health Care Inequities
• Decision-Making & Care-Seeking Behavior
• Multi-Level Modelling & Analysis; Qualitative & Quantitative Mixed-Methodologies
• Race, Class, & Gender

Jenny McDonnell is a dual PhD / MPH candidate at Emory University. In her fourth year of Emory Sociology’s PhD program, Jenny is concurrently working toward her MPH in Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences at Rollins School of Public Health.

Jenny’s research focuses on the ways that race, gender, and class –- as macro-level systems of social organization –- influence healthcare decision-making and care-seeking behavior. More specifically, Jenny is interested in interrogating the ways that sociohistorical context influences how individuals make meaning of, and navigate, health care.

Her research uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies, incorporating narrative interviewing, archival data analysis, and social network analysis to explore health care inequities. Ultimately, Jenny seeks to engage epistemologically with what is left out of canonical formations of illness and health care in the public health discipline.

• Jenny McDonnell and Ellen Idler. 2020. "Advance Care Planning & Healthy Living Through Faith: Targeted Opportunities in African American Communities". Journal of Palliative Care and Social Practice 14:1-15.
• Irene Browne, Anne-Kathrin Kronberg, and Jenny McDonnell. 2022. "Spillover Effects of Restrictive Immigration Policy on Latinx Citizens: Raising or Lowering Earnings?" Sociological Perspectives. Forthcoming.