Draft:Robin Fross

Robin Fross, M.D., F.A.A.N. is a neurologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders (1987-2018). She was also an associate clinical professor of neurology at the University of California - San Francisco (U.C.S.F.). She directed the first botulinum toxin (Botox) clinic for neurologic disorders in Northern California while at Kaiser-Permanente. She also was instrumental in starting the first Neuroscience Movement Disorders Program in Northern California providing stereotactic neurosurgical treatment for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, while at Kaiser.

Education and Career
She received her medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1979, then pursued internal medicine training at Evanston Hospital - Northwestern University, until changing fields in 1982 to receive her neurology residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (1982-1985), followed by a clinical fellowship in the subspeciality of Movement Disorders at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. (1985-1987).

She spent her 30-year clinical career at Northern California Kaiser-Permanente, with additional time as consultant at the Parkinson’s Institute in Sunnyvale, California (1991-1994) and at the Sonoma Developmental Center in Eldridge, California (1990-1994). In addition, she taught neurology residents-in-training in their outpatient clinics at U.C.S.F. (1994-2018), retiring as an associate clinical professor of neurology.

During her fellowship from 1985-1987, before botulinum toxin (Botox) was approved for clinical use by the FDA, she participated in clinical trials of the drug’s use in treating the movement disorder “spasmodic torticollis” (cervical dystonia). Immediately upon approval of botulinum toxin by the FDA for clinical use in treating eye disorders (strabismus and blepharospasm) in 1990, she began to use the drug in off-label (and later FDA approved) treatment of cervical dystonia and other movement disorders, starting the first Northern California clinic for botulinum toxin treatment of dystonia and movement disorders.

In 1994, along with colleague neurologists Helen Bronte-Stewart and Jeff Klingman at Kaiser-Permanente, she put together the first comprehensive neuroscience program for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders to provide stereotactic neurosurgical treatment (brain surgery) in carefully evaluated and qualified patients, including use of internationally developed protocols and extensive (lifelong) followup management. The first patients to receive stereotactic surgery in the program happened in 1996. Dr Bronte-Stewart went on to develop the Stanford Movement Disorders Center shortly thereafter.

Honors
Dr Fross was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology in 1996.

Personal Life
Dr Fross is the granddaughter of Hank Mann, silent film comedian (an original Keystone cop and in several Charlie Chaplin films).