Contact: Michael Oldani
(262) 472-1728
oldanim@uww.edu
WHITEWATER – Medical anthropologist Michael Oldani began his career marketing pharmaceutical drugs to physicians. Now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Oldani was recently awarded a grant to research patients’ compliance to their prescriptions.
Oldani and UW-Milwaukee anthropology professors Kalman Applbaum and Paul Brodwin received a $114,000 grant from the UW-Milwaukee Research Growth Initiative grant.
“By combining our work, we kind of became this three-headed grant-writing monster,” Oldani said. “We’ve been able to keep our own agendas throughout the research. Our various takes on the subject have lead to some great ideas.”
The combined project is titled “Adherence to pharmaceutical treatment: A clinical ethnography of mental health service in Wisconsin.” Applbaum researched the doctor’s role in prescribing medication and the reasoning behind the prescription of certain medications, while Brodwin studied the support staff’s role in ensuring patients’ medical compliance.
Oldani’s focus is on patients and what happens after they leave the doctor’s office. Having worked for the pharmaceutical industry, he was already aware of the various interests in keeping patients on their prescriptions.
“Medical compliance is an under-researched field, and it’s an issue that isn’t going away,” Oldani said. “I changed the pharmaceutical model of marketing drugs, looking at aspects of the patients’ lives that go largely ignored.”
By building case studies and working closely with patients at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, Oldani was able to identify key problem points in a patient’s adherence to a medical routine.
“I looked at family and individual history and talked to kids receiving prescriptions,” Oldani. “It’s so common now for young persons to be taking prescription drugs. What isn’t looked at is if the parents are supportive of the medication.”
“Doctors could only see patients for a short time, so they’re not sure if patients are getting the message when it comes to prescriptions,” Oldani said. “I looked at how caregivers presented compliance information, then followed patients into their communities, seeing what factors helped or hindered their compliance.”
A special volume on Oldani’s work will be published in August 2010. He plans on implementing the textbook in his upper-level anthropology courses.
“The fact that we were able to get this grant is significant,” Oldani said. “It’s great recognition for the social sciences and will help towards getting further grants in the future.”
