DOM Faculty Expected to Attend Town Hall on Precision Medicine Initiative, Dec. 7

The UA Department of Medicine will host a “Town Hall Faculty Meeting” on Wed., Dec. 7, 5:15-6:15 p.m., to discuss our role in the White House Precision Medicine Initiative® (PMI).

In July, the UA Health Sciences and Banner Health partnered to win a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant to fund its initial participation in the initiative. If it enrolls enough patients (at least 10,000 in the first year), the partnership would be in line to receive a total of $43.3 million over five years—the largest such award in university history. It’s expected to enroll 150,000 over those five years.

For additional details, see the Nov. 30 UAHS memo from UA Senior Vice President for Health Sciences Joe G. N. “Skip” Garcia, MD, which includes links to an FAQ document, the initiative’s NIH webpage as well as video and slides of his “State of the UA Health Sciences” address on Nov. 14.

   WHAT: DOM Precision Medicine Town Hall Faculty Meeting
   WHEN: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016 – 5:15-6:15 p.m.
   WHERE: Main Campus, UAHS/COM Room 5403; South Campus, Conference Room 3030 (where Grand Rounds is televised)
   LIVESTREAM: https://streaming.biocom.arizona.edu/event/?id=27043 

Arizona PMI lead principal investigator Akinlolu (Lolu) Ojo, MD, MPH, PhD, UA Health Sciences associate vice president, Clinical Research / Global Health Initiatives, and a professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology, will join Department Chair Monica Kraft, MD, to help present our goals and objectives and explain the need for your involvement.

This program will be split into an initial presentation followed by breakout into individual focus groups for further discussion.

“In this way, we can get input from faculty regarding their questions, concerns and ways we can move forward and be productive to ensure we get enough people enrolled, but that we also have good retention,” Dr. Kraft said. “For this initiative to be a success, we require the engagement and participation of all faculty.”

The initial presentation offers an overview of the White House and the NIH-led component of the PMI Cohort Program (NIH PMI CP)—now referred to as the All of Us Research Program. The UA Health Sciences and Banner Health will play a vanguard role as one of eight academic health centers nationwide selected to enroll 1 million participants into the PMI CP. 

The transformative aspects of the PMI CP will be discussed including enrollment of 150,000 or more Arizonians into the Cohort Program and how the UAHS and Banner diverse stakeholders including community partner organizations figure in the design, implementation and governance of the PMI. 

The presentation will describe how faculty and graduate trainees in the UA Department of Medicine will have the opportunity for “early access” to the NIH PMI research resources including a local parallel biobank on the 150,000 participants from Arizona.  The implications, opportunities and challenges presented by the implementation of the NIH-PMI CP in Arizona will be discussed.

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Release Date: 
12/02/2016 - 4:45pm