Genomic risk in clinic care to promote health equity in New York City patients

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Primary care physicians (PCPs) are uniquely poised to integrate genomic medicine into routine care for the diagnosis, prediction, and prevention of rare and common disease; however, medical education does not keep pace with the rapidly evolving applications of genomic information, creating a barrier to the adoption of genomic medicine. To address this gap, the Institute for Genomic Health and the Division of Genomic Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai established a novel Genomic Medicine education Track for Internal Medicine (IM) residents in 2020, consisting of interactive educational modules covering a range of topics related to genomic applications. In this proposed supplement to the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) IV Network parent grant, we plan to develop these educational modules into a 9-part, web-based educational series tailored to PCP trainees called Genomic Education in Medicine for INtegrating genomic Information (GEMINI), and to assess their impact on primary care learners. GEMINI will be distributed to providers in the eMERGE IV Network. These goals will be accomplished by pursuing two specific aims: 1) improve existing Genomic Medicine Track education content to ensure that it meets the needs of IM trainees and includes additional content on integrated risk models to generate GEMINI, and 2) assess the impact of GEMINI on providers’ knowledge of and comfort integrating genomic medicine into practice. In Aim 1, we will conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with past and present IM residents enrolled in the Mount Sinai Genomic Medicine Track to guide the improvement of these genomics-focused educational modules, engage with subject domain experts to communicate residents’ feedback, add a module focused on integrated risk models using the eMERGE Genome Informed Risk Assessment (GIRA) report as a learning use case, and improve the production quality of recorded lectures and activities to produce high quality and accessible genomic medicine education. In Aim 2, we will develop pre- and post-module assessment surveys to measure objective understanding and perceived knowledge of genomic medicine, confidence interpreting genetic test reports, comfort communicating with patients about their genomic results, and confidence utilizing genomic information in clinical care, and we will build the assessments into GEMINI. Leveraging web-based educational platforms, we will disseminate the modules and assessment surveys broadly to providers across the 6 current eMERGE IV network clinical sites, and we will compare providers’ pre- and post-module assessment responses to measure the degree to which GEMINI impacts the domains of interest. By engaging trainees directly with genomics experts and interactive activities, GEMINI will illustrate the practical applications of genomic medicine in routine care, particularly during the critical years of early career training, to help both fill the gap left by most medical school curricula and position learners to deploy genomic medicine in their own clinical practice and research endeavors.