Did you know better medications and healthcare outcomes begin with research? Historically, Blacks have not participated in health research. A panel including reps from the “All of Us” Research Program discusses the challenges and solutions to getting more Black research participation.
Question: The majority of health research has been conducted with a middle-aged Caucasian man as a participant; does that influence the medicine we take?
Larissa Gilmer: What that means is that most medicine is designed specifically for older white males. So that means if you are not a white male, then the medicine that you’re taking may not be the best for your body going forward. We need to do a better job of including everyone in health research. The only way that we can fix this injustice is with your help. All of Us Research Program is on a mission to help change health research, to represent our community, excuse me, our country’s diversity. All of us is the largest and most inclusive health research program ever. And we’re collecting health data from over a million people in an effort to help researchers learn more about health.
Question: What is the All of Us Research Program?
Larissa Gilmer: That is a great question. All of Us is a large program led by the national institutes of health that are working to improve healthcare through research. Unlike research studies that focus on one disease or one group of people, All of Us is building a diverse data set that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of health conditions. It is a longitudinal effort to gather data from at least 1 million people or more who reflect the diversity of the United States in order to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs to enable individualized prevention, treatment and care for all of us. All of Us is a part of the precision medicine initiative, which launched in 2015 under the Obama administration.
Question: What is precision healthcare?
Larissa Gilmer: Precision medicine is a new approach to improving health treating disease and finding cures. It acknowledges that a one size fits all approach to medicine isn’t the best because we know that what works to treat me may not be able to treat you. Each person is different and we’re gonna talk about three things or three factors that impact our health greatly. So the first is genetics. The second one we’re talking about is lifestyle. And then our third one is our environment.
This facebook live uncovers a lot of information about how best to contribute to medical research and why it is important. Click the link for more information
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