Carole Browner

Carole H. Browner is a medical anthropologist with additional training in public health. She joined the UCLA School of Medicine Faculty in 1983 in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and has been a full professor since 1993, as well as a professor in the Department of Anthropology since 1987. Professor Browner also served on the faculty of Wayne State University, Universitat Rovira I Virgil (Tarragona, Spain) and Columbia University. She earned her bachelor's degree from the New School for Social Research and a Master's and doctorate in anthropology from UC-Berkeley, and a Master's degree in Public Health from the same institution. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Health Care Policy Research, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as by a number of private foundations. She has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the State of California's Birth Defects Monitoring Program and serves on the Executive or Advisory Boards of several University of California institutes including UC MEXUS, the Institute for American Cultures, the Institute for Development Studies, Latin American Center, and the Center for the Study of Women. She serves as consultant on a wide variety of research projects on womenA?s and Latino health issues in southern California, on the U. S. Mexican border, and in Mexico. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, reproduction, and health. In Cali, Colombia she investigated the circumstances that led pregnant women with unintended conceptions to seek illegal abortion. In rural Mexico, she sought to understand how local political relations shape gender-based reproductive strategies. Since 1989, she has worked in the U. S. on issues surrounding the medicalization of pregnancy and prenatal care, particularly the impact of genetic information on reproductive experience.

Browner's current work looks at communication about genetics and genetic testing during clinical encounters between neurologists, movement disorder patients, and their family. Recent rapid developments in genetic medicine have created the expectation that genetic assessments will soon become integral to routine health care. Yet although such practices stand to have far-ranging clinical implications, little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the processes or consequences of incorporating genetic testing into routine diagnosis and management procedures. We are studying some of the factors that shape neurologists' views about and use of genetic information in their clinical practice, and the consequences of their doing so. Our specific aims are: 1) To examine how genetic information associated with adult-onset movement disorders is communicated during routine clinical care. 2) To determine how physicians, patients with symptoms of adult-onset movement disorders, and their families conceptualize and use this information. 3) To explore the degree to which variation in practice setting acts to constrain or promote neurologists' offers of genetic testing to such patients and their families. The practice of neurology is an ideal setting in which to explore the processes by which genetic information is incorporated into clinical routines. While standard genetic tests to diagnose specific neurological diseases are becoming increasingly available, it is not yet known when and how these tests are offered to particular patients. In addition, the nature and consequences of this genetic knowledge introduces unique concerns into the standard clinical relationship between neurologists, patients, and families (i.e., psychological distress of learning about a hereditary disease, fears of occupational and/or insurance discrimination, and disclosure of familial risk). Our focus is on why, how, when, and by whom these issues are communicated during medical interactions, and how specific genetic information affects patients' and family members' understandings about and management of symptoms.