Dear Colleague,
While the pandemic continues to surge in California at the fastest pace yet, public health precautions like social distancing and mask wearing are more imperative than ever. CIAPM continues to support the statewide pandemic response, primarily via the Governor’s COVID-19 Testing Task Force, which among many efforts, opened a Department of Public Health Branch Laboratory this month in Valencia. This lab increases testing capacity and works with communities, health care providers, and industry to improve testing accuracy, access, and availability during this critical time.
Additionally, it has been an honor over the last year to contribute as part of the writing team for the forthcoming California Surgeon General’s Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences. CIAPM team members also provided design, formatting, and reference management support. The report is expected to be published Wednesday, December 9 by the Office of the California Surgeon General and will be featured in our December newsletter.
Alongside updates of our ongoing endeavors and the recent Advisory Council meetings that set the stage for our next steps as a program, this month we are delighted to showcase the results of Project Baby Bear, a 2-year precision medicine demonstration pilot across five children’s hospitals, funded by the California Department of Health Care Services.
We appreciate your support and, as ever, would be open to highlighting your programs in a future issue; send us an email or use the blue button at the bottom of this newsletter.
In partnership,
The CIAPM Team
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Website Resources
During these months of conferences-turned-webinars, announcements of numerous virtual events about precision medicine, social determinants of health, and other important topics can be found on our Meetings page. Suggest an event for inclusion by emailing us. |
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Capitol Collaborative on Race and Equity (CCORE)
CIAPM is participating in CCORE, a 14-month racial equity capacity-building program for state employees.
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Precision Medicine Advisory Council |
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The fall 2020 California Precision Medicine Advisory Council ( CPMAC) meeting took place on November 10 and 20. The main goal for the meeting was to create working groups and launch projects for the Council to undertake that will push forward the field of precision medicine. The two broad topic areas, gleaned from past Council discussions and input from a variety of stakeholders, are Integrating social, behavioral, biological, and discovery data to improve health ("Data Integration"), and Equitable consent frameworks for engaging communities as partners in research and clinical care ("Equitable Consent"). Council member Hakan Sakul, VP and Head of Diagnostics for Pfizer, will serve as Chair for the Data Integration working group; Kenneth Kim, Medical Director of Ark Clinical Research, is Chair of the Equitable Consent working group. The working groups will hold meetings outside of the quarterly CPMAC meetings in furtherance of the projects' goals.
Fall 2020 meeting minutes will be available on our website in mid-December. The winter CPMAC meeting is tentatively scheduled for February, 2021.
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News from the CIAPM Network |
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Project Baby Bear
From 2018-2020, the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine was awarded $2 million in state funds to demonstrate the clinical and financial value of providing early rapid whole-genome sequencing for critically ill infants supported by Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. Five hospitals participated: Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, Children’s Hospital Orange County, UC Davis, UC San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital – Oakland, and Valley Children’s Hospital.
As documented in their Final Report, Project Baby Bear conducted genomic sequencing of 178 babies and families that resulted in the following outcomes:
- Provided diagnoses for 43% of babies (76 total)
- Altered the management of 31% of babies (55 total), leading to fewer hospital days, fewer procedures, or new therapies
- Diagnosed 35 rare conditions
- Reduced healthcare spending, in large part due to earlier discharges and fewer procedures, including: 513 fewer days in the hospital; 11 fewer major surgeries; 16 fewer invasive diagnostic tests; $2.5 million in healthcare savings; and less suffering associated with unnecessary surgeries, tests, and therapies.
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One project partner, Dr. Mario Rojas, NICU Medical Director of Valley Children’s Hospital, summarized the results well: "I have never seen a diagnostic tool that’s made such a huge impact in intensive care medicine in all my years of practice."
We congratulate the team for their exceptional work advancing the clinical utility and value proposition of precision medicine and the hundreds of participating families for contributing to this powerful demonstration pilot.
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Evidence-Based Telehealth Network Program
Estimated Deadline: March 22, 2021
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Institutional Grants for Research Training in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science
Estimated Deadline: May 14, 2021
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HSS Request for Information: Innovative Technologies to Improve Care for Underserved Aging Populations
Public input is being sought by the DHHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health for innovative technology solutions to chronic disease management for aging underserved populations. Deadline: December 22, 2020
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Advance Health Equity through SDOHs
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the National Association of County Health Officials will fund up to 50 communities at $50,000 each to evaluate their work to advance health equity by addressing social determinants of health (SDOH). Deadline: December 8, 2020
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Call for Papers: Telehealth for Underserved Communities
Deadline: March 31, 2021
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