Karen E. Anderson MD

Karen E. Anderson, MD, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Neurology and the newly appointed Director of the Huntington Disease Care, Education and Research Center (HDCERC), a joint endeavor of Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. As Director, she leads a multidisciplinary team devoted to HD care, the first in the DC Metro area. She previously founded the University of Maryland Huntington's Disease Clinic, and served as its director for 12 years.

Dr. Anderson’s research interests include behavioral symptoms in patients with Huntington’s Disease (HD) and other movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease. She serves on the executive committee of the Huntington Study Group (HSG) and the Scientific Planning Committee of the ENROLL Huntington's Disease study. Her work includes collaboration with the European HD Network on global efforts to study and treat emotional symptoms in HD. She also had a lead role in development of expert consensus treatment guidelines for emotional symptoms in people with HD. She conducts clinical trials for new drug therapies in HD and is trained in programming for deep brain stimulation treatment for movement disorders.

Dr. Anderson earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from University of Chicago. She completed her internship at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and her residency and postdoctoral research training in psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she began her work in HD. She has subspecialty certification in neuropsychiatry and behavioral neurology.