School faculty member Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH, has been appointed to an expert panel advising the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on how to develop President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative.

The $215 million initiative, announced by Obama earlier this year, aims to gather and analyze vast amounts of genetic and other patient data to develop more targeted, personalized therapies for treating disease.

The panel, composed of medical, technology, and policy leaders, will guide the NIH in its efforts to build a group of at least one million American volunteer participants who will confidentially share their genetic, environmental, lifestyle, and behavioral information with qualified researchers.

Burchard was asked to be on the panel because of his expertise in applying precision medicine to minority children with asthma. His lab leads the largest study of the interactive effects of genetics, environmental exposures, and socioeconomic factors on asthma in minority children (Latino- and African-Americans) in the United States, a multi-center effort with more than 9,000 participants. The project was spurred by recognized ethnic and genetic differences in asthma occurrence, mortality, and treatment responses.

Burchard is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

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Esteban Burchard Named to Expert Panel for Obama's Precision Medicine Plan