Geneticizing Disease: Implications for Racial Health Disparities

January 15, 2008, 9:30am – 11:00am

About This Event

Today’s dialogue in medical journals and the mainstream press on health disparities in American society increasingly focuses on individuals' genetic predispositions to disease. More and more, race is interjected into this dialogue as scientists link genes of certain racial groups to medical conditions while pharmaceutical companies increasingly seek to medicate those conditions. Unfortunately, during this process the focus on reducing and preventing racial health disparities – which in large part can be attributed to social determinants – becomes obscured.

The Center for American Progress will explore these trends and their implications for addressing racial health disparities by hosting a public dialogue.  Jamie Brooks, co-author of  "Geneticizing Disease: Implications for Racial Health Disparities," which will be released at the event, will provide an overview of the issue and the paper's findings. Law professor Lisa Crooms will follow with a legal and racial perspective on the implications of “geneticizing” disease. And in closing, Dr. Nicole Lurie will discuss the known non-medical determinants of health, such as environment, insurance status, and other socio-economic factors. Meredith King, co-author of the paper, will moderate the discussion to follow.

Panelists:
Jamie Brooks, Project Director on Race, Health, and Justice, Center for Genetics and Society
Lisa Crooms, Law Professor, Howard University
Nicole Lurie, Director of the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities and Co-Director of the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security, RAND

Moderated by:
Meredith King, Health Policy Analyst, Center for American Progress

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Biographies

Jamie D. Brooks, Esq., is the project director on race, health, and justice for the Center for Genetics and Society and has been working to secure universal health access for a number of years. Before joining the Center for Genetics and Society she was a staff attorney for the Nation Health Law Program (NHeLP) where she focused on reproductive rights and justice for all women, implementing human rights principles into the firm's advocacy, environmental justice issues, and language access issues. Prior to working for NHeLP, she served as a law clerk in the District of Columbia Superior Court and legal and policy clerk to the National Asian and Pacific American Women's Forum. She received her J.D. from Washington College of Law at American University in 2003 and her B.A. from Rice University in 2000.

Lisa Crooms, J.D., teaches Constitutional Law, Gender and the Law, International Human Rights Law, and Supreme Court Jurisprudence at Howard University. Professor Crooms received her B.A. in Economics from Howard University in 1984 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan in 1991. A human rights activist since 1984, Crooms has worked with the Washington Office on Africa and the American Committee on Africa. She is currently a board member for the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, the U.S. Human Rights Network, and the Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights. She is also a coordinator of the U.S. coordinated Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) 2007 shadow report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In 2006, she served in the same capacity for a similar effort regarding U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

She has served as an advisor to institutions including The Urban Justice Center, Unifem, the Sentencing Project, the International Human Rights Law Group (Global Rights) and Amnesty International - U.S.A.

Meredith King serves as the Health Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. As a member of the health team, King collaborates with staff and senior fellows in advancing a broad range of health issues, including universal health care. Prior to joining the Center, King worked at the Health Assistance Partnership of Families USA, serving as the Medicaid Research Analyst. In that job, she worked with a network of Medicaid ombudsmen and consumer health assistance programs by supplying them the latest research regarding Medicaid policy in their respective states.

King obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Public Policy and American History from Washington and Lee University in 2003. In May 2005, she completed a Masters of Public Policy with a concentration in Social Policy from American University.

Nicole Lurie, M.D., MSPH, is the Director of the RAND Center for Population Health and Health Disparities and Co-Director of the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security. She is also a Senior Natural Scientist and the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Professor of Health Policy at RAND. Previously, Dr. Lurie was Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and most recently, Medical Advisor to the Commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health. From 1998-2001, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Throughout her career, Dr. Lurie's research has focused on health services, primarily in the areas of access to and quality of care, managed care, mental health, prevention, and health disparities. She is leading a collaborative effort, centered at RAND, to study the impact of changes in the health care safety net in the District of Columbia, and to develop a collaborative, public-private health data infrastructure for the District and the region. Dr. Lurie attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed her residency and MSPH at UCLA, where she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar. Dr. Lurie has been a member of several IOM committees and is currently the chair of the IOM Roundtable on Health Disparities. Dr. Lurie is a member of the IOM.