Dr. Carol Brown on a Career Advancing Health Equity

October 29, 2024

Carol Brown, M.D., is a member of the President’s Cancer Panel, a gynecologic cancer surgeon, and chief health equity officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she holds the Nicholls-Biondi chair for health equity and is vice chair of health equity in the Department of Surgery. 

Dr. Brown’s research, clinical, and advocacy work is focused on improving health equity for medically underserved people affected by cancer. She developed and leads the Cancer Health Equity Research Program, a unique partnership between Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and community oncologists that brings clinical trials and cancer genomic profiling to underserved patients at their local institutions.

Like fellow President’s Cancer Panel member Mitchel Berger, Dr. Brown was initially inspired by a love of problem solving and working with her hands. She trained at the Columbia University College of Physicians¹ and worked frequently at Harlem Hospital Center², which both provide care to underserved communities. Many of her patients were experiencing not only severe illness but also poverty and exposure to environmental hazards that seemed to undermine their health. "I got really interested in that aspect of it,” she says, “how your environment or how much food you had to eat could impact your outcomes for things like heart attacks or trauma.” In time, these factors and others like them would come to be known as social determinants of health, and decades of research would show their impact on patients’ ability to stay healthy, get medical care, recover from illness, and live longer lives. 

As her training progressed, Dr. Brown realized that she wanted more substantive clinical relationships with her patients than a surgeon’s role typically allows. “You operate on a patient, you have the post-op appointment, and then you never see them again,” she says. A mentor introduced her to gynecological oncology, a relatively new specialty at the time, which combines women’s health, cancer care, and internal medicine—the ideal intersection of Dr. Brown’s professional passions and interests. She spent her medical residency at the University of Pennsylvania exploring how social and environmental factors affect women’s health. She was able to work with the same patients for years and train with leaders in the field of what are now called health disparities.

Throughout her research career, Dr. Brown has also witnessed and contributed to “game-changing” scientific advances that have transformed the treatment of gynecologic cancers. New drugs developed by researchers in the field have turned some forms of breast and ovarian cancer “from death sentences to chronic diseases,” she says, and “I was humbled and very, very blessed to be, as they say, in the room where it happened.” Her work has supported the rise of health disparities research, which in turn has brought public and legislative attention to the far-reaching effects of socioeconomic inequality. She has also worked with advocates to raise awareness and increase funding for research to help understand, prevent, and treat gynecologic cancers.

Dr. Brown's career as a clinician, a surgeon, and a researcher has been marked by great accomplishments. Yet, she says, “Being very involved in advocacy and health care policy is one of the things I am most proud of.” 

^{1 Now called Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons}

^{2 Now called NYC Health + Hospitals Harlem}