Clemson's Visionary Healthcare Genetics PhD Program Achieving Goals

The impact of genetics on health care has the potential to be greater than any earlier scientific advancement. With all it promises in early prevention, detection and treatment of disease, genetics will require a much different way of providing health care and conducting research.

Finding new ways to apply genetics to clinical practice, creating policies and guidelines for ethical decision-making and identifying predisposition to disease in diverse communities require scientists and health-care providers to have new skills and to work together if health-care genetics is to reach its potential. To help meet this challenge, Clemson University is offering the country’s first interdisciplinary doctor of philosophy in healthcare genetics.

With its highly collaborative research and practical-application structure, this program will prepare interdisciplinary scientists to

• Collaborate with multiple disciplines to generate knowledge and develop theories that focus on the genomic aspects of actual and potential health problems;
• Formulate health promotion, disease prevention and treatment strategies that translate and integrate genomic knowledge from a variety of disciplines;
• Demonstrate leadership that facilitates interdisciplinary development and application of ethical guidelines and health policy in genetics;
• Disseminate research findings to develop models of practice that incorporate the expanding knowledge of genetics.

One of the goals for doctoral students in the Healthcare Genetics interdisciplinary PhD program is to have a program of research upon graduation.  This will be accomplished through dissertation research, publication of manuscripts and presentation of papers at regional and national conferences.  Currently there are three students in the program. The first year students are already moving forward. In Fall, 2008 Mary Beth Steck, MSN, FNP-BC and an iPhD student was invited to provide a podium presentation on the topic of “A Synthesized Literature Search on Risk Assessment of Hereditary Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma” at the International Society of Nurse’s in Genetics (ISONG) in Philadelphia.  There were two of the doctoral students who attended this meeting and had the opportunity to listen to and network with international leaders in genetics including the Director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins.  

This spring, all three of the doctoral students are presenting at the Beta Omicron Sigma Theta Tau conference at the Medical College of Georgia, School of Nursing.  Each of them is presenting their topic from the podium:  1) Helen Ran He on “Longitudinal Study of DNA Activity as a Predictive Assay for Breast Cancer”; 2) Holisa Wharton will discuss “Cost, Risk, and Benefit of Screening Young Women for Factor V Leiden Mutation Prior to Prescribing Oral Contraceptives” and, 3) Mary Beth Steck on “Risk Assessment of Hereditary Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma”.  Once the presentations are completed the students will take the comments they received and incorporate them into a manuscript to be submitted prior to the end of the semester.