Community Health Center Participates in National Health Study

Scientists, along with Community Health Center, co-founded by Mark Masselli here in Middletown, are searching for volunteers to take part in a 10-year research project. Called a "precision medicine cohort", the study is looking into causes and cures of disease.

Mark Masselli thinks it’s a good idea. “There are a lot of enticing reasons to participate." Volunteers will be asked some basic information, such as their age, income, education, race, gender, medical history and blood type.

The Community Health Center is one of only six clinics chosen by the National Institutes of Health from around the country. Other hospitals and community health centers will invite their patients to participate too.

Diversity is key to the study. Participants are from a range of geographic, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic variations. Community health centers, such as CHC where Mark Masselli started back in 1972, are targeted because almost all patients earn much less than the poverty level, about one-third are Latinos and approximately 25% are African-American.

These are the other academic and medical centers: Columbia University, collaborating with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; Harlem Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine; Northwestern University in Illinois; the University of Arizona; and the University of Pittsburgh.

Two other major partners include Vanderbilt University in Nashville, which operates a data center to store the information. A huge databank to collect, analyze and store 35 million samples of blood, and DNA, is centered in the Mayo Clinic.

The Precision Medicine Initiative project started under President Obama.. The project is being run by Dr. Francis S. Collins, who is director of the National Institutes of Health, and who previously led the government’s to map the human genome project.

Participants can sign up online, or telephone and data collection include online forms, existing health records, smartphone apps, in-person exams, Fitbit, and wearable sensors, making it easy to record blood pressure, heart rate and vital signs.

The "precision medicine cohort" is huge. Almost all other health research studies in the U.S. and much, much small. The next largest study, the Framingham Heart Study, which produced valuable insights on heart disease, engaged with about 15,500 people.

Government researchers want participants, not just patients. Patients can access to all the information about themselves, such as lab and genetic test results. Doctors in turn can then use the information to customize treatment at a granular level for patient. Unusually, volunteers can help guide the research by sitting on steering committee and advisory boards.

Congress in December 2016 provided funding to the NIH for the million-person study and bipartisan support suggests the project will continue.

But Mark Masslli says there is much more to it than statistics and lab work. "Perched on your shoulders will be the best and brightest researchers, working on your behalf,” he says.