Precision Public Health Awardees
“Addressing cervical cancer screening disparities using a Precision Public Health approach”
PI: Rama Mkuu, Ph.D.
The goal of this proposal is to leverage the OneFlorida Data trust to identify the extent of cervical cancer (CC) screening disparities by characterizing sociodemographic and geospatial predictors of CC screening in Florida and to test the feasibility of using the UF Health Integrated Data Repository to recruit black women with type 2 diabetes to participate in a ‘perceived barriers CC screening’ study to adapt an evidenced-based CC screening intervention.
“Linking within- and between- host dynamics in tracking recent Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission”
PI: Marie Nancy Séraphin, Ph.D.
This study will assess within-host genetic diversity as a marker of the force of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (i.e. bottleneck size) within tuberculosis clusters (Aim 1a) and measure the correlation with established tuberculosis transmission risk factors (Aim 1b). Our goal is to validate a method to classify tuberculosis cases into likely super spreaders.
“Identifying and characterizing PrEP users from OneFlorida EHR and exploring providers insights on PrEP related CDS Tools”
Our overarching long-term goal is to leverage and improve HIV risk prediction algorithms, using a large, statewide multi-domain electronic health record database –the OneFlorida Data Trust–to better identify women at risk of HIV and help to implement targeted Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) programs. In particular, we aim at reducing sex disparity in PrEP practices and, overall, reduce HIV incidence cases in Florida. To accomplish these objectives, it is critical to understand the current practices and barriers to PrEP implementation. The specific aims of this pilot study are: 1) identify and describe people who received PrEP in OneFlorida, 2) understand clinicians’ perspectives on a clinical decision support tool that may help them identify PrEP candidates.
Precision Medicine Awardee
“Sepsis-induced myopathy: development of a myotube avatar assay for precision medicine”
We have developed a co-culture avatar assay, in which we exposemyoblasts obtained from healthy human donors to plasma obtained from septic patients with similar age and physical characteristics. The plasma of each septic patient is used as conditioned media to induce the myopathy phenotype in cells and myotubes. We will use this avatar approach as a step toward precision medicine to guide discoveries of potential pathways to develop treatments for sepsis-induced myopathy. We will test the central hypothesis that sepsis induces myopathy via alterations in the plasma proteome as well as satellite cells and myotubes metabolome.