The National Institutes of Health awarded $18.6 million in grants to six clinical trial sites and one coordinating center to accelerate the use of genomics in clinical care.
The grants are funded under the NIH's Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research Consortium, also called CSER2., The consortium is a collaboration between the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
As part of the research initiative, NHGRI and NCI partnered with the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to improve recruitment processes for patients from underrepresented minority groups and to study healthcare settings beyond academic medical centers.
"Engaging patient populations that are traditionally underrepresented in genomics research, coupled with the inclusion of broader types of healthcare settings, will enrich the data that result from CSER2," said Regina Smith James, MD, director of clinical and health services research at NIMHD.
The six grants, which are planned for a total of four years, also support developing methods to integrate genomic sequencing into clinical practice and to investigate the effect of genomic sequencing on healthcare outcomes.