NIH Funds Precision Medicine Research with a Focus on Health Disparities

National Institutes of Health News Releases reports, “The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), part of the National Institutes of Health, has committed approximately $31 million over five years, pending available funding, to launch a new program for Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers (TCCs) for health disparities research exploring the potential for precision medicine to promote health equity and advance the science of minority health and health disparities."

NIMHD’s precision medicine initiative will prioritize research in:

• 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 outcomes
• Development of pharmacogenomic and other precision medicine tools to identify critical biomarkers for disease progression and drug responses in diverse populations
• Translation of pharmacogenomic discoveries into clinical practice including effective treatments
• Investigation of facilitators and barriers to implementing precision medicine approaches in disparity populations
• Understanding mechanisms that lead to differential health outcomes in common diseases in minorities and disparity populations

Click here to visit the NIH website for more details about this new initiative.