Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers for Health Disparities Research Focused on Precision Medicine

Program Description

Precision medicine offers an innovative approach to disease prevention, early detection, and treatment by taking into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles.

Understanding the biological and environmental mechanisms underlying a patient’s health or condition allows clinicians to better predict which treatments will be most effective. This approach is especially valuable to populations experiencing health disparities, who may not respond to standard diagnostic or treatment strategies developed from clinical trials lacking representative study participants. Including these populations in clinical research is crucial for reducing health disparities.

The NIMHD Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers (TCCs) for Health Disparities Research Focused on Precision Medicine Program supports innovative research aimed at understanding and implementing precision medicine. The research will help identify populations who may or may not benefit from medical advances due to structural and systemic factors that often limit the effectiveness of new diagnostics or therapeutics. In addition, this research will enable the strategies to lessen adverse impacts on vulnerable populations.

Addressing health disparities requires a transdisciplinary framework that cuts across organizational silos and fosters an integrated approach across multiple disciplines: clinical, biological, behavioral and social sciences, environmental science, public health, health care, economics, public policy, and many other disciplines. Integration of Precision Medicine into Health Disparities pose a new set of challenges that may require access to new diagnostic approaches and interventions requires strong collaborations between clinicians, researchers and community organizations, service providers and systems, government agencies, and other stakeholders to ensure that contextually appropriate and relevant research is conducted and that findings can translate into sustainable individual-, community-, and systems-level changes that improve population health.

The Precision Medicine TCCs support research in the following areas:

Data Integration—development of new tools and analytic methods for integrating patient data with information about contextual factors acting at the community or population level to influence health;
Population differences in pharmaceutical therapy outcomes—development of pharmacogenomic and other precision medicine tools to identify critical biomarkers for disease progression and drug responses in diverse populations;
Translating pharmacogenomics discoveries to populations experiencing health disparities—translation of pharmacogenomic discoveries into effective treatment or clinical practice;
Implementation Research—investigation of facilitators and barriers to implementing precision medicine approaches in disadvantaged populations.

This program is co-funded by NHGRI and NCI.

Currently Funded Centers:

Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine and Population Health – Vanderbilt University
- Focusing on African American and Latino health – predictive modeling of cancer survival, biobank of DNA samples, and behavioral interventions for overweight men
Stanford Precision Health for Ethnic and Racial Equity (SPHERE) Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center – Stanford University
- Studying cultural competency, aging and dementia for all races/ethnicities, and biomarkers in Latino youth in the development of obesity and diabetes
Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center in Precision Medicine and Minority Men's Health – MUSC
- Focusing on minority men’s health – prostate cancer, effects of chronic stress, and cardiovascular disease risk factors among Black emerging adult men
Yale Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center for Health Disparities Research Focused on Precision Medicine (YALE-TCC) – Yale University
- Focusing on populations of Caribbean descent – diabetes risk prediction via early biomarkers, prevention and risk stratification of high blood pressure, chronic disease prevention and control, and health policy implementation to address obesity and diabetes epidemic
African American Cardiovascular pharmacogenetic CONsorTium (ACCOuNT) – Northwestern University
- Establishing a research network to support the use of precision medicine in African Americans