PUBLIC HEALTH AND GENETICS

多年来，联邦和州公共卫生机构在提供基因药物方面发挥了作用。我们对遗传学对健康的贡献的了解急剧增加，正在挑战这些机构改变它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既受到公共卫生遗传学领域广受赞誉的成功(如新生儿筛查)的影响，也受到目前公共卫生角色更广泛地发生变化的影响，也受到优生学的历史和过去公共遗传学项目中的失误的影响。该项目将探索当前为应对遗传学进步而构建公共卫生实践的努力的广度，分析这些努力与现有公共卫生法律和政策的一致性，以及它们对历史教训的反应。公共卫生机构在生殖基因检测、国营新生儿筛查项目和预测性基因检测方面的作用将受到特别重视。这项分析的结果将被用来确定公共卫生遗传学正在采取的新政策是否以最佳方式满足公众的需求，如果不是，则建议改进的领域。

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.