Overcoming health disparities in precision medicine

Intersectional approaches in precision medicine

A session of the Pacific Symposium of Bioinformatics. Big Island of Hawaii, January 4-8, 2025

The Overcoming health disparities: intersectional approaches in precision medicine session of PSB 2025 seeks to advance computations methods and data science approaches to overcome disparities in precision medicine and public health by addressing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities across biomedical research, patient, provider, and health system levels, which are influenced by a mix of social, psychosocial, lifestyle, environmental, and biological factors. This year's emphasis will include intersectional research approaches that examine how various social identities and categories—like race, gender, class, sexuality, age, ability, and ethnicity—interact to shape individual experiences in healthcare and systemic inequalities. Emphasizing the role of 'Big Data' and the Electronic Health Record, the session will discuss challenges in computational approaches to intersectionality, particularly the capture and analysis of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and environmental risk factors. Strategies being developed to address these challenges include enhanced data collection through large population-based cohorts, multi-pronged approaches within large EHR populations, and advanced geocoding to assess environmental impacts in conjunction with clinical data. These efforts are essential to overcoming existing limitations in capturing complex and dynamic information such as transgender health issues, where traditional data collection methods fall short.

Health equity

Session Topics

Topics within the scope of this session include:

Genomic research and its translation
  • Methods for trans-ancestry GWAS
  • Leveraging genetic variation across world populations
  • Assessment of variant pathogenicity across ancestries
  • Disentangling genetic ancestry vs social determinants of health in genomic research
Disease risk and outcome predictions
  • Portability of multimodal risk/outcome predictors across races, ancestries, and populations
  • Methods for development and/or adjustment of portable polygenic risk scores (PRS)
  • Incorporation of clinical factors avoiding embedded bias
Approaches for intersectional research
  • Integration of SDOH to study complex disease
  • Tools to integrate Omics data and SODH
  • Health disparities in intersectional populations
  • Women’s health, transgender populations, and sex differences
Resources for clinical research and medicine
  • Capture and curation of race/ethnicity data in health care
  • Development of diverse biobanks and EHR resources
  • Characterizing patients via genetics instead of race
  • Assessment of inequities across the precision medicine continuum
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    Clinical trials and Pharmacoequity
  • Measuring and increasing diversity in clinical trails
  • Ancestry correlates of drug responses and adverse events
  • Impact of racial differences on drug response on inequities
  • Methods to achieve "Pharmacoequity"
    •
    Fairness in artificial intelligence applied in medicine
  • Identifying and reducing racial biases in AI models
  • Assessing for diversity in training data
  • Monitoring for model drift due to racial biases
    •

    Session Organizers

    Keolu Fox

    University of California San Diego

    Submission Information

    Important dates

    Paper Submission Deadline: August 1, 2024
    Notification of Acceptance: September 9, 2024
    Poster/Abstract Submission Deadline: December 2, 2024
    Conference Date: January 4 - 8, 2025

    Proceeding papers

    The core of the conference consists of rigorously peer-reviewed full-length papers reporting on original work. All accepted papers will be published electronically and indexed in PubMed, and the best of these will be presented orally to the entire conference. PSB will also initiate submission to PubMed Central (PMC); however, PMC indexing applies only to papers that comply with the NIH Public Access Policy. Submitted papers are limited to twelve (12) pages (not including the cover letter) in the PSB publication format. Papers must be submitted to the PSB paper management system. For details see the Pacific Symposium of Biocomputing website.

    Each paper must be accompanied by a cover letter. The cover letter should be the first page of your paper submission. The cover letter must state the following:

    • The email address of the corresponding author
    • Indicate that your submission is directed to the "Overcoming Health Disparities" session
    • The submitted paper contains original, unpublished results, and is not currently under consideration elsewhere
    • All co-authors concur with the contents of the paper

    Please note that the submitted papers are reviewed and accepted on a competitive basis. At least three reviewers will be assigned to each submitted manuscript.

    Posters

    Researchers wishing to present their research without official publication are encouraged to submit a one page abstract by the abstract deadline listed above to present their work in the poster session.

    Conference Venue

    The session will be held as part of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, at the Fairmont Orchid Resort in the Big Island of Hawaii