Episode 6: Why is it Important to Explore the Early-life Origins of Health and Disease?

Narrator:
Hi and welcome to Viewpoint with Dean Mary Klotman from the Duke University School of Medicine.

One of the aims of the Translating Duke Health Initiative is to explore the early-life origins of health and disease. Today we spoke with Dean Klotman about the impact this work will have on future children and adults.
Dean Klotman:
So this Translating Duke Health initiative really captures the principles of what we are trying to achieve with these big initiatives. So it's a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the very, very beginning of disease, which in many cases begins at birth or around birth. Those might include genes and biology, the physical environment, health behaviors, or even social and economic factors. And the idea is you start designing ways to look at the biology early on and you develop biomarkers and ways to predict disease later in life. Now hopefully that data will start to inform interventions and preventative approaches to improve health in both the child as well as in adult populations. So what's really exciting and unique about this initiative is that it really leverages across Duke, in terms of bringing together not only the biomedical and clinical scientists, but also the social scientists, the scholars in education, the scholars in policy, to really address this unique challenge. In fact the tagline for this initiative is “Ending Disease Where it Begins” which I really think summarizes what we're trying to do.
Narrator:
Viewpoint is a production of the Duke University School of Medicine. Tune in each month for Dean Mary Klotman’s thoughts and ideas about important and timely topics and issues related to medical education, science and discovery, and patient care.
For more information please visit medschool.duke.edu/viewpoint