2024-25 Colloquium Series

Misuse of Genetic Ancestry and Race and the Promise of Epigenomics in Resolving Health Inequalities

Biomedical researchers in the US, and often globally, tend to make assumptions about the meaning and use of race and genetic ancestry that can lead to bias in our understanding racial health inequalities. These assumptions include 1) presuming the terms race, ethnicity and ancestry are the same, and conflating these concepts; 2) assuming genetic differences behind chronic diseases without testing relevant alleles; 3) assuming adequate diversity among participants of genetic (and epigenetic) studies, and 4) ignoring social factors, such as structural racism, that can confound associations with a health outcome. These problematic assumptions will be demonstrated through case studies of research on the etiology and treatment of hypertension both in the US and Puerto Rico. Finally, an epigenome-wide study of stress among children of Mexican descent will be briefly discussed as an example to identify mechanisms for racial inequalities in health.