World Health Day was ob­served on April 7. The day serves as a glob­al cam­paign to raise aware­ness about health is­sues af­fect­ing peo­ple world­wide. Here at home, there is one doc­tor who has been play­ing her part in en­sur­ing women and peo­ple from all walks of life un­der­stand the com­plex health is­sues im­pact­ing their lives.

Car­ol Quash

Who here hasn’t heard “It’s Dr Browne,” while scrolling through Tik­Tok and In­sta­gram? If you haven’t, maybe it’s time to do a search so you can ben­e­fit from the free tips of­fered by Dr Mar­i­ane Browne on her so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

From med­ical to lifestyle ad­vice, her reels iden­ti­fy every­day is­sues and of­fer sim­ple ways to avoid or ad­dress them.

“I used to work at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH), and when I left, one of the things I took away was that pa­tients did not un­der­stand or know enough about their health and did not un­der­stand com­plex top­ics.

“So from watch­ing Tik­Tok and study­ing it through­out the pan­dem­ic (COVID-19), I re­alised that it was a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing way to try to reach a broad­er au­di­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the re­gion so that I could sim­pli­fy com­plex med­ical in­for­ma­tion so peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly use it in their dai­ly lives.”

Browne told WE she has no­ticed that some peo­ple prac­tise un­healthy habits un­der the guise of cul­tur­al habits, wait­ing un­til they get symp­toms to take their health se­ri­ous­ly. Her plan is to coun­ter­act that.

“I want to build a cul­ture of pre­ven­tion… My goal is not just to treat peo­ple who are ill, but re­al­ly just kind of help them avoid it al­to­geth­er.”

Browne start­ed post­ing her videos in 2023 with the hope that she would have a broad­er im­pact than she did when she worked at the hos­pi­tal, where she felt pa­tients were com­ing through a re­volv­ing door.

“I want­ed to em­pow­er peo­ple to take charge of their health, and that’s how it re­al­ly came about.”

Now, with over 100,000 fol­low­ers on Tik­Tok, she be­lieves she is on her way to achiev­ing what she set out to do. She said the re­spons­es to her posts have been very strong, as peo­ple gen­uine­ly con­nect with the con­tent and with her as Dr Browne as well.

“They find that I come across very au­then­tic and re­lat­able and they ap­ply the tips that I give them to their own dai­ly lives, and they do see an im­prove­ment.”

She be­lieves that, nat­u­ral­ly, she has al­ways been a good pre­sen­ter and has a knack for pub­lic speak­ing, but that in it­self was not enough to get her to where she is on her so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

“I had to build up the con­fi­dence to record videos and put my­self out there, be­cause I think con­fi­dence plays a big part in be­ing on so­cial me­dia and be­ing will­ing to take any back­lash or crit­i­cism…”

Browne, a for­mer stu­dent of Bish­op Anstey High School, Port-of-Spain, won an ad­di­tion­al schol­ar­ship and stud­ied at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton. She grad­u­at­ed with a first de­gree in chem­istry in 2013, re­turned to T&T, did her med­ical de­gree at UWI, St Au­gus­tine and worked at the PoS­GH. She now prac­tis­es as a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er at the Fam­i­ly Med­ical Cen­tre, Cas­cade.

“I worked in in­ter­nal med­i­cine as a house of­fi­cer at the hos­pi­tal. In­ter­nal med­i­cine is one of the most dif­fi­cult de­part­ments to work in by sheer vol­ume of pa­tients, be­cause most peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, when they present to the hos­pi­tal, it’s re­al­ly with chron­ic dis­ease ill­ness­es…And it re­al­ly was over­whelm­ing,” even for some­one who had al­ways want­ed to be a doc­tor.

“There was a huge emo­tion­al im­pact dur­ing COVID, and I re­alised, for my own men­tal health, it was best that I moved to a dif­fer­ent set­ting.”

She left when she got an­oth­er job op­por­tu­ni­ty, but she felt that she need­ed to use so­cial me­dia to put some­thing out there that wasn’t just for en­ter­tain­ment.

“The pri­vate sys­tem ba­si­cal­ly gave me more time.”

Browne al­so has a spe­cial in­ter­est in lifestyle med­i­cine – an area in which she is cur­rent­ly get­ting cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Lifestyle med­i­cine is ba­si­cal­ly ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple on how their di­et, ex­er­cise, stress, and sleep habits af­fect them. It’s about me guid­ing them in that di­rec­tion while ap­ply­ing tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine.”

She said that while she can give her pa­tients med­ica­tion to treat their dis­eases, there are a lot of oth­er com­po­nents to treat­ing dis­eases that are lifestyle-based and that will al­so im­pact how the body heals.

“So I re­al­ly have a spe­cial in­ter­est in teach­ing peo­ple how to live their lives best…I am pas­sion­ate about help­ing peo­ple and I think that my pur­pose in life is to help peo­ple.”

Her over­all mis­sion is to em­pow­er peo­ple with the in­dul­gences that they need to live health­i­er, longer lives; to un­der­stand their bod­ies and to make im­por­tant de­ci­sions that pre­vent dis­ease, and not just re­act it to it.

“You know, peo­ple are very re­ac­tive when it comes to their health…So I hope that I can help build a healthy cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go and with­in the Caribbean in gen­er­al. I think that a healthy so­ci­ety is a pro­duc­tive so­ci­ety.”

In be­tween see­ing pa­tients and mak­ing and post­ing her videos, Browne said she tries to work on mak­ing the best ver­sion of her­self, while giv­ing her­self a good amount of grace.

“I love my fam­i­ly, I love my friends, and I think that I’ve had a very in­ter­est­ing jour­ney get­ting to where I’m at right now. And I think that my fam­i­ly has had the biggest im­pact in my life.”

When it comes to her ded­i­ca­tion to her so­cial me­dia prac­tice, she sees it go­ing way be­yond what it is to­day.

“I want to keep ex­pand­ing to reach more peo­ple, and I want it to help me pro­vide more well­ness ser­vices for in­di­vid­u­als. I’m hop­ing that it will help me ex­pand my prac­tice, and that I am able to re­al­ly reach a glob­al au­di­ence and re­al­ly put Trinidad and To­ba­go on the map in terms of a place that is healthy, and a place that pri­ori­tis­es health.”