A new year for the Forum and public health genomics

With the completion of another successful APHA meeting, we enter the third official year of the Genomics Forum. First and foremost, there are thanks in order. Jody Platt, now Past Chair, played an integral role in the birth of the Forum and led its expansion to a successful organization of more than 800 members. I was struck this year by the immense presence of genetics and genomics, where little existed as recently as four years ago. The difference is staggering. The challenge before us is to continue the Forum's growth, both in terms of membership and also in collaborations and idea generation.

Truly, we must ask the question, “what is public health genomics?” To answer this question, we need to be good listeners. We must listen to each other, to our colleagues in public health, and to the individuals, families and communities we serve. This will prove to be a year of decision-making for the public health genomics community. With major projects such as GAPPNet and GEDDI laying out paths before us, we must decide what our role will be. The first step must be to take an honest look at our strengths and the challenges before us.

We have many strengths in:

• Early disease detection and diagnosis
• Understanding relationships between genetics, lifestyle, and environment
• Prevention and risk assessment
• Integration of services

We also have many challenges, such as:

• Health and risk communication
• An unclear future of our workforce and competency
• The relationship between the hype and reality of new technologies
• Reimbursement and regulation
• Access to services and disparities

What challenges do you face in your work? Your experience will help guide the direction of our forum and of our work for the year to come.

The Infinite Meeting

As conference season approaches once again, I find myself wondering how I can get the most out of each meeting. From presenting, to networking, to exhibiting, each conference allows me to reconnect with colleagues, meet new people in my field, and gather valuable information. But, why do I get the feeling that I’m starting over with each new meeting? Why isn’t there any continuity? How can the lessons learned from one meeting build naturally into the next?

As with any question, there is always a personal and a systems level answer. I think that personally, I can bring my experiences with me and share them. I can also follow up with contacts, invite people to future meetings, and send them updates using the tools of the Genomics Forum and Genetic Alliance.

I am also interested in what we can do to stop being separate organizations and start being one community. How do we systemically maximize the effort that we are each expending every year? Here are a few ideas I’ve heard about or have been pondering lately. I invite you to post some of your own.

1) Open space technologies
Most meetings I attend have an abstract process that requires presenters to determine relevant topics a year before the meeting. What if we injected some openness into the meetings that let people self-aggregate around topics they think are important? We can use open space technologies to allow participants to choose in the moment, when they’re surrounded by the information and their neurons are firing.

2) Repeating themes
We all attend multiple meetings every year where we hear the same topics over and over again. There must be a better way to combine all of those presentations into a more productive format. It would be interesting to look at each season’s meetings, and then invite the speakers to give their presentations in a webinar format. Think of them as multi-disciplinary informational webinars that devote significant time to the question, “What do we do next?”

3) Two places at one time
There have been some interesting forays into virtual meetings in the past few years. In addition, we have seen numerous organizations blog, tweet, and stream updates about their meetings as they are in progress. It is time to take these efforts to the next level. How can we look at creating a seamless platform between meetings? How can we link up concurrent meetings so that participants can interact with each other? How can we truly involve participants that cannot attend due to travel, disability, or conflicts? A reality is that many organizations make money off of their meetings, but we can be more efficient and creative with how we look at participation.

Collaborations in Public Health

Last week, I attended Genetic Alliance’s three annual events: Genetics Day on the Hill, Gene Screen, and the 2009 Annual Conference, Discovering Openness in Health Systems. During these events, I was struck by the power of genetics and genomics to promote collaboration across multiple stakeholder groups, diseases, and even perspectives. At its heart, Genomics Forum is a direct manifestation of our wish to integrate genetics and genomics into the broader health community and infuse our work with the knowledge and insight of the whole health system. One of our toughest challenges is "knowing what we don't know" about how our work relates to and impacts other areas of public health. The beauty of new technologies, integrated health systems, and collaborative models is that we don't have to know everything. To tap into the greater knowledge of our colleagues, our patients, and our communities, all we need to do is let down our defenses and dissolve the boundaries between us and them. In my work with Genetic Alliance, we are quick to point out that there is no "us and them," but only a "we." In public health, the word genomics can often be siloed into the realm of “them,” viewed as the harbinger of stem cell research, cloning, and genetically modified foods. But we know that genetics is an integral part of who we are, has transformed our knowledge of disease, and holds untapped potential for diagnostics and treatments. Still, the vast majority of work is yet to be completed and there is much that the genetics community can learn from its partners in public health. "We" are in this together and it is "our" health at stake.