Precision Public Health: Introduction

 What is Precision Public Health ?

" If precision medicine is about providing the right treatment to the right patient at the right time, precision

public health can be simply viewed as providing the right intervention to the right population at the right time."  - Dr. Muin Khoury

Precision Medicine and Precision Public Health: Two Peas in a Pod

Precision medicine aims to exploit rapid advancements in biomedical sciences, information technologies and data science to usher in a new era of biomedical research and health care applications. These same technologies also guide the developing concept of Precision public health. In a research setting  Precision public health can be used to create programs and deliver interventions that are tailored to underserved community groups for whom focused attention has the potential to significantly improve health outcomes.

The term, Precision Public Health, was first coined in 2015 by Dr.Khoury, the Director of the Office of Public Health Genomics in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  Precision Medicine and Precision public health are really two peas in a pod with one focused on "providing the right treatment to the right patient at the right time, while precision public health is the right intervention to the right population at the right time".

Khoury MJ, Iademarco MF, Riley WT: Am. J. Prev Med 2016 Mar; 50(3): 398-401

Image credit: https://blogs.cdc.gov/genomics/2015/03/02/precision-public/