SEATTLE—The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has appointed Gregory Simon, MD, MPH, as a member of the advisory panel for the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative’s Cohort Program. Dr. Simon is a Group Health psychiatrist, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute, and chair of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance’s Scientific Advisory Board.
“People living with mental health conditions have a wide range of treatment options, but we need better evidence to help them choose,” Dr. Simon said. “The Precision Medicine Initiative hopes to substitute science for what’s now decided by trial and error.”
Precision medicine is a new approach to disease prevention and treatment that takes into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles. The Precision Medicine Initiative aims to produce the scientific evidence needed to put this approach into clinical practice.
A key part of the Initiative is the creation of its Cohort Program. This first-of-its-kind national research collection will take one million or more volunteers from all walks of life. The goal is to build a resource that will help scientists answer a wide range of important health questions.
“The Program will expand our understanding of the ways we can improve health and treat disease,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD.
Panel members will provide ongoing guidance and oversight of the cohort, while contributing significantly to the evolution of the program's vision, scientific and clinical goals, and operations.
In addition to Dr. Simon, the panel’s other members are:
Its ex officio members are:
Additional members will be named over time.
National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.
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