Advancing precision public health using human genomics: examples from the field and future research opportunities

AbstractPrecision public health is a relatively new field that integrates components of precision medicine, such as human genomics research, with public health concepts to help improve population health. Despite interest in advancing precision public health initiatives using human genomics research, current and future opportunities in this emerging field remain largely undescribed. To that end, we provide examples of promising opportunities and current applications of genomics research within precision public health and outline future directions within five major domains of public health: biostatistics, environmental health, epidemiology, health policy and health services, and social and behavioral science. To further extend applications of genomics within precision public health research, three key cross-cutting challenges will need to be addressed: developing policies that implement precision public health initiatives at multiple levels, improving data integration and developing more rigorous methodologies, and incorporating initiatives that address health equity. Realizing the potential to better integrate human genomics within precision public health will require transdisciplinary efforts that leverage the strengths of both precision medicine and public health.

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Death investigation systems and disease surveillance

Epidemiology and Infection ◽

10.1017/s0950268810002840 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 139 (7) ◽

pp. 986-990 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

C. R. McGOWAN ◽

A. M. VIENS

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Disease Surveillance ◽

Central Government ◽

Health And Safety ◽

Public Health Research ◽

Health Initiatives ◽

The Uk ◽

Death Investigation ◽

Public Health And Safety ◽

Public Health Initiatives

SUMMARYMedico-legal death investigation systems have the potential to play an important role in disease surveillance. While these systems are in place to serve a public function, the degree to which they are independent of central government can vary depending on jurisdiction. How these systems use this independence may present problems for public health initiatives, as it allows death investigators to decline to participate in government-led surveillance regardless of how critical the studies may be to public health and safety. A recent illustration of this problem in the UK is examined, as well as general lessons for removing impediments to death investigation systems participating in public health research.

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Informatics and Data Analytics to Support Exposome-Based Discovery for Public Health

Annual Review of Public Health ◽

10.1146/annurev-publhealth-082516-012737 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 279-294 ◽

Cited By ~ 52

Author(s):

Arjun K. Manrai ◽

Yuxia Cui ◽

Pierre R. Bushel ◽

Molly Hall ◽

Spyros Karakitsios ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Data Analytics ◽

Public Health Research ◽

Public Health Genomics ◽

Public Health Community ◽

Human Genomics ◽

The Public ◽

Health Community ◽

Genomics Research ◽

Data Ecosystem

The complexity of the human exposome—the totality of environmental exposures encountered from birth to death—motivates systematic, high-throughput approaches to discover new environmental determinants of disease. In this review, we describe the state of science in analyzing the human exposome and provide recommendations for the public health community to consider in dealing with analytic challenges of exposome-based biomedical research. We describe extant and novel analytic methods needed to associate the exposome with critical health outcomes and contextualize the data-centered challenges by drawing parallels to other research endeavors such as human genomics research. We discuss efforts for training scientists who can bridge public health, genomics, and biomedicine in informatics and statistics. If an exposome data ecosystem is brought to fruition, it will likely play a role as central as genomic science has had in molding the current and new generations of biomedical researchers, computational scientists, and public health research programs.

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Complaint-Oriented “Services”: Shelters as Tools for Criminalizing Homelessness

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ◽

10.1177/0002716221996703 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 693 (1) ◽

pp. 264-283

Author(s):

Chris Herring

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

San Francisco ◽

Homeless People ◽

Public Spaces ◽

Health Initiatives ◽

Public Health Initiatives

This article argues that the expansion of shelter and welfare provisions for the homeless can lead to increased criminalization of homeless people in public spaces. First, I document how repression of people experiencing homelessness by the police in San Francisco neighborhoods increased immediately after the opening of new shelters. Second, I reveal how shelter beds are used as a privileged tool of the police to arrest, cite, and confiscate property of the unhoused, albeit in the guise of sanitary and public health initiatives. I conclude by considering how shelters increasingly function as complaint-oriented “services,” aimed at addressing the interests of residents, businesses, and politicians, rather than the needs of those unhoused.

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Evaluating the impact of public health initiatives on trends in fecal occult blood test participation in Ontario

BMC Cancer ◽

10.1186/1471-2407-14-537 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Gladys N Honein-AbouHaidar ◽

Linda Rabeneck ◽

Lawrence F Paszat ◽

Rinku Sutradhar ◽

Jill Tinmouth ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Blood Test ◽

Fecal Occult Blood Test ◽

Occult Blood ◽

Fecal Occult Blood ◽

Occult Blood Test ◽

Fecal Occult ◽

Health Initiatives ◽

The Impact ◽

Public Health Initiatives

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Effectiveness of a community-based Tai Chi program and implications for public health initiatives

Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation ◽

10.1016/j.apmr.2004.10.020 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 86 (4) ◽

pp. 619-625 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Alice Y. Jones ◽

Elizabeth Dean ◽

Rhonda J. Scudds

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Tai Chi ◽

Community Based ◽

Health Initiatives ◽

Public Health Initiatives

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From Prussia to China: Japanese Colonial Medicine and Gotō Shinpei’s Combination of Medical Police and Local Self-Administration

Medical History ◽

10.1017/s0025727300005378 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. 343-347 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Christos Lynteris

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Colonial Medicine ◽

Republican China ◽

Self Administration ◽

Japanese Colonialism ◽

Health Initiatives ◽

Historical Investigation ◽

Key Issues ◽

Japanese Colonial ◽

Public Health Initiatives

Recent historical investigation into the rise of ‘biopolitical modernity’ in China has shed some surprising light. While it was long thought that British public health initiatives entered China via Hong Kong, the recent work of Ruth Rogaski, Philippe Chemouilli and others has established that it was actually early Japanese colonialism that played the crucial role. It was the Meiji Empire's hygiene reform projects in Taiwan and Manchuria that provided the model for Republican China. Curiously overlooked by medical historians has been one of the major early works of Japanese public health that directly inspired and guided this colonial medical enterprise. This was that of the Japanese health reformer and colonial officer, Gotō Shinpei (1857–1929), and it was undertaken in Munich as a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Max von Pettenkofer. In this article, I focus on the way in which Shinpei dealt in his thesis with the relations between centralisation and local self-administration as one of the key issues facing hygienic modernisation and colonial biopolitical control.

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