HJNO Jul/Aug 2022

20 JUL / AUG 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS  Can you start by explaining precision medicine? Each of us is unique. We have a different genetic code. We have different behaviors. And, we live and work in different environ- ments. All these factors affect our health. That’s why healthcare cannot be one-size- fits-all. Precision medicine addresses what makes us unique. It uses our personal data to help doctors and researchers design more personalized prevention and treat- ment strategies. This helps ensure we each get the best standard of care. Is there a cost to providers and patients for imprecise medicine? Patients may not be served well by treat- ments designed for the “average”patient. We hope in the future that the All of Us Research Program will help advance precision med- icine. Many people and populations have been left out of biomedical research and, thus, often left out of healthcare solutions. Health problems can take years to unravel and require much trial-and-error treatment. Patients may not have access to or make use of their own health data. Julia Moore Vogel, PhD, MBA Program Director The Participant Center, All of Us Research Program Julia Moore Vogel manages The Participant Center (TPC) for the All of Us Research Program, which is charged with recruiting and retaining 350,000 individuals that represent the diversity of the United States. TPC aims to make it possible for interested individuals anywhere in the U.S. to become active participants, for example by collaborating with numerous outreach partners to raise awareness, collecting biological samples nationwide, returning participants’ results, and developing self- guided workflows that enable participants to join whenever is convenient for them. Prior to joining the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Vogel created, proposed, fundraised for, and implemented research and clinical genomics initiatives at the New York Genome Center and The Rockefeller University. She oversaw the proposal and execution of grants, including a $44M NIH Center for Common Disease Genomics in collaboration with over 20 scientific contributors across seven institutions. She also managed corporate partnerships, including one with IBM that assessed the relative value of several genomic assays for cancer patients. She has a BS in mathematics from RPI, PhD in computational biology and medicine from Cornell, and MBA from Cornell. What is the All of Us Research Program? The All of Us Research Program is a his- toric effort by the National Institutes of Health to help change health research to represent our country’s diversity. We’re collecting health data from over a million people in an effort to help researchers learn more about health. What is the promise of All of Us to healthcare providers? Over time, precision medicine research may increase scientific evidence and help improve guidelines to enable precision medicine opportunities for more people and conditions. This facilitates: • Better understanding of the impact of environment and lifestyle factors on health. • Increased knowledge of differences in risk factors and response to treatments among diverse populations. • More information on the development of conditions that may allow for earlier detection. • Deeper understanding of different conditions that may allow for better stratification. • Innovations that may make it easier to share electronic health records with other providers and patients. • New knowledge to help address health disparities, increase patient engage- ment, and understand the usefulness of consumer health devices and apps. How could healthcare be different if we had more diverse research? Historically, communities of color have been left out of or mistreated by health research. This is a major problem. All of Us is a new kind of research program. We’re building the largest and most inclusive health research initiative of its kind. We’re collecting health data from over a million people in an effort to help researchers learn more about health. We work with commu- nities that have not been represented in the past to understand health disparities across a larger group of people. When scientists understand what makes us all unique, they can work on uncovering patterns and designing more personalized care.