Dr. Oldani is a trained medical anthropologist (Princeton University 2006), who continues to focus his ethnographic and mixed methods research into several overlapping areas. These areas include the sales and marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry (including conflicts of interests for everyday prescribers); gift exchange within the healthcare marketplace; changes in psychiatry during the blockbuster era of psychotropics; the mental health of vulnerable communities; deprescribing; and most recently ketamine uses and new markets.
In addition, for the last decade Dr. Oldani has been collaboratively leading campus communities as they build interprofessional education (IPE) infrastructures and develop meaningful pathways for learners across multiple health and social care professions. His IPE research has focused on collaborative practice agreements between providers and pharmacists; in-home care opportunities for collaborative teams, team-based deprescribing of psychotropics, and the role of focused ethnography for future practitioners. His research has been published in a range of journals from Medical Anthropology Quarterly to the Journal of Interprofessional Care to Transcultural Psychiatry. He has been a PI, Co-PI and mentor on several grants supporting his research, including funding from the US Fulbright Program (both a recipient and a mentor); HRSA (mentor); Department of Public Health (State of WI); Retirement Research Foundation; NSF-I-Corp; American Lung Association; and the Council for Independent Colleges.