Mary L. James, M.A. | Institute of Gerontology

Assistant Research Scientist, IoG

300 North Ingalls
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2007
Tel: (734) 936-3261
Fax: (734) 936-2116
Email: mljames@umich.edu

Mary James joined the IoG faculty as an assistant research scientist in February 2002. For nearly 25 years she held a variety of positions in Michigan state government, where she was instrumental in the development and evaluation of home and community based services for people who are elderly and disabled. Among her achievements are the establishment of a statewide 1915c Medicaid waiver, known as MI Choice, and the companion state-funded Care Management program. Her commitment to data-driven long term care policy resulted in the creation of an information system that has enabled comparisons about the characteristics, expenditures, and outcomes of persons served in these home care programs as well as in institutional settings. This data set has also been used to design quality of care indicators, a case-mix classification system, and an empirically derived screening instrument and placement algorithm.

These interests in long term care extend into her new job at the Institute. With her IoG colleague Brant Fries, she is part of a “virtual organization” with researchers at Boston’s Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged. This initiative works with a variety of state and federal agencies across the US to use data collected from nursing home and home care Minimum Data Sets to inform public policy. Other research interests include design of assessment systems for working-age persons with disabilities and the art of translating research into public policy.