Precision Strategies as a Timely and Unifying Framework for Ongoing Prevention Science Advances

Excerpt

The purpose of this Special Issue is to encourage prevention scientists to take advantage of the recently actuated precision medicine movement to promote research toward determining what works for whom and under what conditions, also termed treatment matching (Collins and Varmus 2015). This strategy is not new to medicine, behavioral health, or prevention science. Nevertheless, the orchestrated proclamation by President Obama and Director of NIH, Francis Collins, M.D. of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) with its $215M and 1 million participant prospective natural history study reinvigorated these efforts at the NIH and among treatment developers and healthcare providers (Collins and Varmus 2015; PMWC 2018; www.​whitehouse.​gov/​precision-medicine). The 1 million participant prospective study has come to fruition in the form of the ALL OF US Research Program (NIH 2019; Sankar and Parker 2017) which emphasizes genetics, environmental factors, social influences, and lifestyle and is thus highly consistent with underlying theories of prevention science (Meagher et al. 2017). Past medical and behavioral clinical trials directed toward treatment matching have yielded mixed results, but overall such studies have played important roles in advancing their respective fields (Broekhuizen et al. 2012; Project MATCH Research Group 1998; Strecher 1999). …