A's, G's, C's, and T's of Health Disparities

In order to eliminate health disparities in the United States, more efforts are needed to address the breadth of social issues directly contributing to the healthy divide observed across ethnic groups. Socio-political structure, including income, education, lifestyle and culture is intimately linked to health outcomes. However, with the tremendous advances in technology and increased investigation into human genetic variation, genetics and genomics is poised to play a valuable role in bolstering efforts to find new treatments and preventions for chronic conditions and diseases that disparately affect certain groups. Promising studies focused on understanding the genetic underpinnings of diseases such as prostate cancer or beta-blocker treatments for heart failure are illustrative of the positive contributions genetics and genomics can have on improving minority health. In this work, we use real-life examples to describe human genetic variation and its role in disease susceptibility and treatment across different ethnic populations. We further make the case that individuals cannot be treated as a representative for all those who physically resemble them or who share in some of their ancestry. Understanding the detailed structure of human genetic variation may help to deconstruct imprecise group definitions currently applied in biomedical research and avoid unintended consequences of generalizing biological characteristics across these groups.