“Precision Health and Leadership in a Pandemic: A Perspective from Stanford Medicine” was the keynote presentation at the 2020 ACCP Annual Meeting, which was held virtually between October 19 and 30, 2020. The speaker, Lloyd B. Minor, M.D., Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, outlined the vision for precision health, which involves precise prediction, prevention, and cure of diseases. Minor explained that the vision draws upon the enablers of precision medicine but endeavors to make health care more proactive.
In Discovering Precision Health: Predict, Prevent, and Cure to Advance Health and Well-Being, Minor and Matthew Rees describe how precision health strives for a more holistic approach to health care. The authors define the key principles of precision health to include the following1:
- Predictive and preventive
- Personalized and precise
- Patient-centered
- Participatory
- Preeminent
- High touch and high tech
In his keynote presentation, Minor recounted Stanford Medicine’s strategy to fight the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. He underscored the importance of addressing social determinants of health in precision health, a need that has become particularly evident during the coronavirus pandemic. He indicated that precision health involves more than medical care. In fact, environmental and social factors are the strongest predictors of health outcomes, followed by behavioral factors, medical care, and then genetics.
In addition to his focus on precision health and its application to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Minor highlighted the following principles of leadership in times of crisis: frequent and clear communication, a culture of accountability, and diversity and inclusion.
- Minor L, Rees M. Discovering Precision Health: Predict, Prevent, and Cure to Advance Health and Well-Being. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.