NAMI: Ask the Expert: Precision Medicine Research: Hope for the Future OD044

Course overview

This course, based on the Ask the Expert webinar series by NAMI, introduces precision medicine as an emerging framework for improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment by integrating individual variability in biology, environment, lifestyle, and social determinants of health. Using precision psychiatry as the focal application, the training reviews why current symptom-based diagnostic categories and "trial-and-error" prescribing approaches often fall short and how genomics, brain-based measures, and data science are being used to refine risk prediction and treatment matching. The course also summarizes current evidence and limitations related to pharmacogenetic testing and artificial intelligence enabled prediction models, with attention to clinical utility, bias, and interpretability. Finally, the presentation highlights the NIH All of Us Research Program as a large-scale, diversity-centered resource intended to accelerate equitable discovery while emphasizing privacy protections and participant partnership. The course, with an intended audience of social workers, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and counselors, translates rapidly evolving evidence in precision psychiatry into practice-relevant considerations for assessment, risk formulation, referral, client education, and ethically informed, equity-centered care planning across service settings.