PUBLIC HEALTH AND GENETICS

多年来，联邦和州公共卫生机构在提供遗传医学方面发挥了作用。 我们对遗传学对健康的贡献的理解的急剧增加正在挑战这些机构改变他们在公共卫生遗传学方面的做法。 公共卫生行为者应对这些挑战的能力是由公共卫生遗传学（如新生儿筛查）广受好评的成功，以及目前更普遍的公共卫生作用的变化，以及优生学的历史和公共遗传学计划过去的失误所塑造的。 该项目将探讨目前努力构建公共卫生实践的广度，以应对遗传学的进步，分析这些努力与现有公共卫生法律和政策的一致性，以及对历史教训的反应。公共卫生机构在生殖基因检测、国营新生儿筛查计划和预测性基因检测中的作用将得到特别强调。 这项分析的结果将用于确定公共卫生遗传学领域正在采取的新政策是否最佳地满足了公众的需求，如果不是，则提出改进的领域。

Federal and state public health institutions have for years played a role in the delivery of genetic medicine. Dramatic increases in our understanding of the contributions of genetics to health are challenging these institutions to change their practices in public health genetics. The ability of public health actors to meet these challenges is shaped both by widely acclaimed successes in public health genetics, such as newborn screening, and by changes currently taking place in the role of public health more generally and by the history of eugenics and past missteps in public programs in genetics. This project will explore the breadth of current efforts to structure public health practice to respond to advances in genetics, analyzing these efforts for their consistency with existing public health law and policy and for their responsiveness to the lessons of history. The roles of public health institutions in reproductive genetic testing, state-run newborn screening programs, and predictive genetic testing will receive particular emphasis. The results of this analysis will be used to determine whether the new policies being adopted in public health genetics optimally meet the needs of the public, and if not, to suggest areas for improvement.