Letter from the Director
Happy November! What a busy year it has been here at TRANSPERS. In-person meetings resumed, and you will find reports below on two key precision medicine conferences, along with other news.
Also, I was honored to be named Editor-in-Chief for Health Affairs Scholar: Emerging and Global Health Policy, which was founded by the leading health policy journal Health Affairs. The journal will offer new opportunities to both researchers and policy makers for publication and rapid dissemination.
Do you have an announcement you would like to see in our next newsletter? Let us know!
Best,
Kathryn
Conference Reports
TRANSPERS Research Highlighted in Precision Medicine Conference
TRANSPERS’s newest faculty member, Emily Mrig, PhD, was the only junior faculty member selected to present an opening session plenary at the 8th annual ABGT Precision Health Conference:
When covering and discovering are at odds: How the logic of health insurance undercuts the promise of precision medicine for people with hereditary cancer risks.
Kathryn Phillips, PhD, chaired a panel on emerging NGS technologies, payer coverage, and evidence of clinical utility and economic value. Panel members contributed diverse perspectives informed by their positions:
- Ryan Taft, PhD, is a geneticist who has been leading Illumina’s iHope program to make whole genome sequencing available to underserved children with rare, undiagnosed, or genetic diseases.
- Sharon Terry, MA, is an advocate for consumer participation in genetic research and is working with Ryan Taft to expand the iHope program.
- Keith Yamamoto, PhD, UCSF’s vice chancellor for Science Policy & Strategy, has been leading national and global policy efforts to advance precision medicine for decades.
National Academy of Medicine Roundtable on Genomics & Precision Health
Sarah Wordsworth, PhD, a long-time TRANSPERS colleague at the University of Oxford, and Kathryn Phillips, PhD, participated in the NAM workshop on Realizing the Potential of Genomics across the Continuum of Precision Health Care. The workshop examined strategies to ensure that genomic applications are responsibly and equitably adopted to benefit populations as well as individuals over time.
Webcast and slides.
Former President Obama Speaks at Illumina Genomics Forum
Kathryn Phillips and American Cancer Society CEO Karen Knudsen were thrilled to get a photo opportunity with the former President!
News
Congratulations to TRANSPERS Collaborator Grace Lin on her Promotion
Grace Lin, MD, has been promoted to full professor at UCSF. Grace is an internal medicine specialist who also conducts research focused on the appropriateness of medical care provided to patients, shared decision-making, and assessing the quality of decisions made by doctors and patients. Congratulations, Grace!
New Journal by Health Affairs to be led by Kathryn Phillips
Kathryn Phillips, PhD, has been named Editor-in-Chief for Health Affairs Scholar, a journal of emerging and global health policy. The new journal is under development and will be launched in early 2023 as a fully open access journal. It represents the first time Health Affairs has launched a new journal since its founding in 1981. In addition to publishing articles on cost, quality, and access, the new journal will focus on technology and innovation, global and population health, and intersections of related fields with health care.
Read the full announcement.
Publications
Dr. Chen Publishes on Patient Preferences for Pharmacogenomic Testing
TRANSPERS Collaborator Cheng Chen, et al. published the first study eliciting preferences for pharmacogenomic testing (PGx) among polypharmacy patients. Their findings, based on a discrete choice experiment, provide policy implications for reimbursing PGx tests for low-income and elderly patients and ensuring the confidentiality of patient test results.
