The goal of the proposed project is to address a well-documented lack of genetics education among health professionals, which is a rate-limiting step in the integration of genetics and genomics into mainstream health care. The five-year project will create, disseminate, and evaluate a set of educational resources for health professionals who are not trained in genetics. Those resources will acquaint health professionals with the application of genetics and genomics to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and will raise awareness of the ethical, legal, and social implications of genetically based health care. All resources will be available free of charge.
The specific aims are: 1. Create, disseminate, and evaluate genetics-education resources that are scientifically accurate and clinically relevant, increase awareness of ELSI issues, and are freely available for use by students, faculty, and practitioners in the health professions. 2. Provide an infrastructure that will leverage collective expertise to raise awareness of the role of genetics in mainstream medicine and reduce duplication of effort in genetics education for health-care professionals. The research design and methods will employ a well-tested process for development and evaluation of educational materials for adult learners. The process is intended to maximize input from content experts and the end users and to help ensure that the resulting resources are 1) scientifically accurate, 2) clinically relevant, 3) educationally effective, and 4) not significantly duplicative of other efforts. The project's relevance to public health is in the improved understand of health professionals about genetics and genomics and their applications to health, disease, and clinical practice.
