Through long-term ethnographic research, based in urban northern California, she has examined breast cancer as a public health problem and a social crisis, with attention to the role of social activism in challenging biomedical views of "risk" as well as approaches to treatment. Her recent work explores differences of ethnicity, race, nationality, and social class among women diagnosed with breast cancer, and the implications of such differences for quality of life and survival. Future plans include a return to ethnographic work on issues of environmental contamination in Appalachia, with attention to their impact on communities and human health. The theme that unites these various projects is an abiding interest in health inequities and social justice and the potential uses of a critically applied anthropology.