Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey is a nationally recognized healthcare attorney and  researcher. Dr. Morrissey concentrates her research in gerontological health and social work and in phenomenological psychology. She studies chronic pain, suffering and consciousness of suffering, serious illness, and death and dying. She has pushed the boundaries of palliative care beyond a medical model in her theorizing and writing on palliative environments.

Dr. Morrissey is the founder of the Collaborative for Palliative Care, a nonprofit organization that provides evidence-based workforce education and training in aging, health and public health, and palliative care. She co-directs the Collaborative’s Interdisciplinary Aging, Public Health, and Palliative Care Certificate Program.

She is co-chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on the New York State Medical Indemnity Fund and chaired the Bar Association’s 2024-2025 Task Force on Opioid Addiction. She is immediate past director of the PhD program in Social Welfare Policy at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work and immediate past chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Health Law Section. She is also a past fellow of the Fordham University Global Health Care Innovation Management Center.

Dr. Morrissey serves on the United Nations NGO Committee on Ageing; the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse as UN NGO representative; the Board of the State Society on Aging of New York; and the City Bar Association of the State of New York Immigration and Nationality Law Committee. She is past president of the State Society on Aging of New York. She is also a past president of the American Psychological Association’s  Society of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and past chair of the APA Divisions for Social Justice, and she is completing her term as member of the APA Governing Council.

She earned her BA, JD, and PhD from Fordham University and her MPH from New York Medical College School of Public Health.