Peter J. Brown, Ph.D.

Professor Brown is editor of Applying Anthropology and the Journal of Medical Anthropology]
Peter Brown is currently working on eight projects:  

1) An intervention study of the health beliefs and barriers to care of African-American  men with tuberculosis or at risk.  Anthropology graduate students are involved;  a video intervention will be aimed at improving communication between outreach workers and patients (collaboration with Grady and SPH). 

2) A "qualitative case-control study" of child diarrhea dehydration deaths in Texas,  examining social and organizational variables extracted from illness narratives.  Will be presented at applied anthropology meetings.  Graduate students involved  (collaboration with CDC, Viral Gastroenterology).  

3) Analysis of a behavioral study of residents and nursing staff in an Alzheimer's special care unit.  Graduate students did human ethology work.  Next presentation on temporal patterns of behavior at physical anthropology (collaboration with Neurology, Wesley Woods, Nursing, Biostatistics and Rehabilitative Medicine). 

4) Development of a cultural ecological model for "Re-emerging Infections."  This was the basis of a paper given at the Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meetings, an introduction and paper in a volume Anthropology  and Infectious Disease being co-edited with Marcia Inhorn, a new edition of handbook of medical anthropology, and a presentation at the next AAA meetings. 

5) Previous work on obesity is being re-focused to examine male cultural perceptions that predispose to central body fat (collaborative work with a nutrition graduate student and Vicki Condit-Bentley). 

6) A reconsideration of the cultural evolutionary process that led to the wide-scale use  of alkali processing of maize in amerindian populations (collaboration with Tadd Shurr and Al Merril, Biochemistry) 

7) This summer he will be giving a paper on gene flow at a conference on "G6Pd Deficiency, Diet and Adaptation to Malaria." 

8) Next year, while on research leave, completion of a monograph on the history of malaria in Sardinia, and compilation of a reader in Medical Anthropology. 
He is also editor in chief of Medical Anthropology, chair of the college Curriculum Committee, and a member of the AAA commission on Long-Range Planning.