The National Institutes of Health has tapped four regional medical center groups to share $5.5 million in funding as part of President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative program.
The program is designed to support research efforts that target more than 1 million U.S. participants to help improve methods of preventing and treating disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics.
The funding for the four healthcare provider organizations is for efforts to begin initial enrollment of participants as well as collecting their health information and biospecimens, and to provide input on developing plans for the program.
The recipients are:
- California Precision Medicine Consortium: University of California, San Diego; with partners Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles; San Diego Blood Bank; University of California, Davis; University of California Health; University of California, Irvine; University of California, San Francisco; and University of Southern California, Los Angeles
- Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA
- New England Precision Medicine Consortium: Partners HealthCare System and its hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with Boston University and Boston Medical Center
- Trans-American Consortium for the Health Care Systems Research Network: Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, with partners Baylor Scott and White Research Institute, Dallas, TX; Essentia Health, Duluth, MN; Spectrum Health, Grand Rapids, MI; and University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.
“These additional health care provider organizations will help us in our efforts to reach communities that have been underrepresented in research,” Eric Dishman, director of the PMI Cohort Program, said in a statement. “By contributing their information, these communities will help people and their health care providers identify the right prevention strategies or treatments.”
Researchers will maximize results by tracking participants' individual genetic characteristics. They will also look at how environment can impact genetic predispositions to disease.