Dr. Allen Brown from the Mayo Clinic Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation studies the process of providing medical rehabilitation care to individuals after their brain function has been altered by injury or disease. The long term goal of his research is to improve participation in roles meaningful to these individuals through testing of rehabilitation models of care in the real world. His research team works within the communities of the upper Midwest to study population-based epidemiology of brain injury (such as incidence, cost, survival), new interventions for improving walking after stroke and negotiating public transportation using smart phone technology, and community-based randomized clinical trials of complex clinical interventions to improve advocacy skill and quality of life after brain injury. His team has investigated the benefit of using personal activity monitors to provide detailed feedback about physical activity and progress during inpatient rehabilitation after stroke. A graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, his work has been published widely in prestigious journals. In this interview, Dr. Brown discusses enhancing advocacy skill attainment by patients, their family members, and caregivers to obtain community-based services; headache classification and development of standardized approaches; characteristics of inpatient traumatic brain injury patients that influence discharge location; key rehabilitation research topics; transforming patterns of workforce training; and fostering patient-centered care.
