While genes per se are not an adequate singular foundation for understanding racial and ethnic health disparities, the potential of differential environments-including treatments-interacting with a differential complement of genes in different subgroups does constitute a fertile context for the study of health disparities. At Stanford, we have in place outstanding strengths in the three critical academic elements requisite to form a coordinated, sustainable, and far-reaching research to practice collaboration to address racial and ethnic health disparities with this focus: 1) Extensive experience both with laboratory assessment of genetic markers and their relationships to both disease risk and treatment relevance, 2) Social disparities researchers, spanning epidemiology, evolutionary biology, health services research and economics, and 3) Novel and outstanding analytic and high-performance computing capabilities, recently consolidated in our Department of Biomedical Data Science. Under the auspices of our new Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, we have recently redoubled our investments in Community Impact. It is in this context that we propose the following overarching aims for this U54 application:
Specific Aim 1 : Draw together the three principal scientific domains into new working relationships to achieve the aims of each of the three proposed research projects while evolving into an integrated and sustainable science team able to take on novel pilot projects proposed by our consortium partners, and sister Centers around the country, while expanding our own portfolio of precision health research focusing on health disparities over time.
Specific Aim 2 : Availing the Consortium and Implementation Cores, develop and expand relationships with our initial research partners to facilitate critical bidirectional research relationships in the community, starting with the three proposed projects and maturing into a broad, sustainable nexus of partnerships to ensure inclusion of further adversely impacted populations as research goes forward.
Specific Aim 3 : Develop broad experience with translation of genetic and biologic information within different racial and ethnic populations to optimize the application of such precision health approaches to reduce ethnic and racial disparities where such approaches are most relevant.
Since most of the disparate health among groups in the US is known to be due to social and economic disparities, there has been scant effort to explore the role of genetic and other biologic differences. The premise of this Center application is to explore how such differences can be identified and applied to narrow the enormous gaps at a time when more affluent members of society and increasingly availing advanced technologies. We bring a host of talent in each of the core research areas, centered in a new Stanford center for Population Health Sciences.
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